[R-sig-Debian] building from source after installing Debian packages

[Ramon Diaz-Uriarte]

Hi Dirk,


On Saturday 07 May 2005 03:43, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On 6 May 2005 at 17:14, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
> | (Apologies for double posting; I sent this to r-help and was suggested
> | that I ask here which I should probable have done to begin with).
> |
> | ***************
> | Dear All,
> |
> | I've got into the habit of installing R from the precompiled Debian
> | binaries, including many of the packages from the r-cran-* Debian
> | packages, and later building from source (e.g., to link against Goto's
> | BLAS, or to build patched versions, etc). I install the newly built R to
> | the very same place (/usr/lib/R). This allows me to build and update R
> | when I wish, AND provides the ease of quickly updating many packages.
> |
> | Things have always worked fine, but after a few funny problems (which
> | could be unrelated to the process itself) I've started wondering if this
> | is a rather silly thing to do, and if I should keep my own build separate
> | from the Debian stuff. Any advice would be much appreciated.

> I don't think there is a silver bullet. It's a touch problem as you're
> mixing two systems.

And I guess that potential problems might be hidden behind an "apparently 
running OK" installation?
>
> We plan to (eventually) provide all CRAN packages as apt-get'able .deb
> packages. But I do not know how long it will take to get there. We have
> some code to build the packages, and the code needs volunteers to test,
> correct, extend, ... it.
>
> OTOH as you're building the packages anyway for yourself, possibly for

I think my message was poorly worded. Actually, I use the deb packages (and 
only build those that do not exist as debs). That is the "advantage" of my 
modus operandi: I can use all the pre-built Debian packages, while at the 
same time using Goto's BLAS and using the patched R sources for R itself.

> several machines, it may make sense if you also start a 'community pool'
> into which we're uploading Debian packages?  It is /really/ easy to build
> Debian packages from CRAN sources, but some checking by actual users would
> surely improve the overall quality.
>
> Would that be interest?  Does anybody feel like prototyping this /
> experimenting with it?

Sure. What can I do? How do I do it? In case architecture matters, I can do 
and test these sorts of things for Intel Xeons, AMD Opterons (debian-pure64 
sid), and Intel Centrinos.


Best,

R.

-- 
Ramón Díaz-Uriarte
Bioinformatics Unit
Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO)
(Spanish National Cancer Center)
Melchor Fernández Almagro, 3
28029 Madrid (Spain)
Fax: +-34-91-224-6972
Phone: +-34-91-224-6900

http://ligarto.org/rdiaz
PGP KeyID: 0xE89B3462
(http://ligarto.org/rdiaz/0xE89B3462.asc)




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