[R-sig-Debian] Compilation of R packages

[Christian T. Steigies]

On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 11:53:42AM -0400, Vincent Goulet wrote:
> Le Mercredi 5 Juillet 2006 09:41, Dirk Eddelbuettel a écrit :
> > Salut Vincent,
> >
> > On 4 July 2006 at 23:27, Vincent Goulet wrote:
> > | I'm currently following your procedure suggested on R-SIG-Debian
> > | (https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-debian/2006-June/000095.html) to
> > | compile and install the latest version of R on Kubuntu. It is my
> > | understanding that I can't just use Debian unstable's binary packages
> > | (which is too bad).
> >
> > It may be worth trying. Debian unstable may well be ahead in terms of
> > certain libraries but you can try.
> 
> Just tried installing r-base from Debian unstable. It requires updating libc6 
> (from 2.3.6-0ubuntu20 to 2.3.6-15). I cancelled the operation in fear of 
> wrecking my newly installed system havoc.

Did you try to install the sarge backport packages? Those do not require
updated libc6 packages, so perhaps they work on ubuntu?

> This is exactly what I did (except the modifications to debian/control) and 
> triggered my question. Building r-base builds r-recommended, but not the 
> r-cran-* packages r-recommended depends on. Then it seems that building of 
> the r-cran-* packages must be done in a specific order.
[...]
> As (K)Ubuntu seem to become increasingly popular flavours of Debian, it would 
> certainly be worth adding a note. Or perhaps someone might be interested to 
> maintain up-to-date Ubuntu packages of R?

I did not see the question/problem? 

> Look, 
> 
> 1) I have no experience whatsoever in maintaining Debian/Ubuntu packages;
> 2) I do not know exactly how more recent versions of packages are distributed 
> for Ubuntu;
> 
> however, if nobody else with more experience than I is interested to maintain 
> such packages, I might try to do my part. I'll just need a mentor. ;-)

I don't have an Ubuntu box, as I do not use Ubuntu at all. I guess I might
find the space to setup an ubuntu chroot, but that would require some more
convincing and time (so definetely not before sunday)!

I think the sarge backported packages should be installable on ubuntu
systems, and if not, you could simply use the sources I prepared for the
backports and try building with them on Ubuntu. That's exactly what I would
do if I had an Ubunto chroot.
Get the source from your favourite CRAN mirror or directly from my debian
page, this should work in /etc/apt/sources.list
deb-src http://people.debian.org/~cts/debian stable/

apt-get source r-base, install the build-depends, and build the package
(dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot or debuild). As Dirk said, I changed the
r-recommended package to include all r-cran-* packages to make the
maintenance of the backport easier for me. Actually, Dirk suggested this
when I started the backport. This is a little tricky for upgrading since
r-cran-* packages are only overwritten but not removed, but I think we
solved most problems there (just an installation problem, no problems with
running the packages). If you run into those problems, the cleanest way is
to remove the currently installed r-recommended (and with it r-base), and then
install the packages from the backport.

BChristian