[R-sig-Debian] Ubuntu 64

[Emmanuel Charpentier]

Dear sig-R-Debian

I'd like to second Christophe Bonenfan's plea for an up-to-date Ubuntu
64 (and maybe an up-to-date Debian 64) repository(ies). There seems to
be no "easy" way, at least for Debian 64, to stay up-to-date on a 64
bits Debian-derived system, "easy" meaning being able to keep a
consistent system up-to-date with no local package creation and no
"local", out-of-packaging, installation.

The alternatives are not pretty :

- keeping outdated versions expose you, among other unpleasant
eventualities,  to the risk of being Ripley'd for having the nerve to
ask for help on R-help with an outdated system (not a pretty sight...) ;

- a locally compiled R deprives you of most of the benefits of using a
distribution (consistency, updates, etc..) ;

- locally compiled packages is some work, that should not be duplicated
if it can be avoided ;

- following Debian unstable is a career in itself (been there, done
that : not a decent pastime for a dental surgeon turned biostatistician
turned dental surgeon...). 

So the right solution is probably to have this work done *once*, checked
seriously, then to have the resultant packages put in some public
repository (feisty-backports and lenny-proposed come to mind, but CRAN
is probably also a good place).

ISTR that Debian has (had ?) a script that allows to take a package's
older source and newer upstream source in order to merge the latter in
the former, thus having a more-or-less painless updating. Back in the
days when I followed Debian unstable, this trick allowed me to update
the wine packages, which were seriously lagging behind upstream ;
however, for the life of me, I couldn't remember what this script is,
and I do not know if it has been ported to Ubuntu. 

If someone was able to walk me through the steps necessary to build new
Ubuntu (Debian ?) packages, and someone (else ?) could put them in the
Right Place(s) (I'm neither a Debian Ordained Maintainer (C)(R)(TM) nor
an Ubuntu MOTU (ditto)), I could pick the work of either building the
new amd64 packages or checking them.

Would you be so kind as to Cc' me : I'm following the lists through the
archives...

					Emmanuel Charpentier