[R-sig-Debian] Are there Debian/Ubuntu packages of the betaversions of R-2.9.0

[Douglas Bates]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 8:18 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:

> On 5 April 2009 at 08:36, Michael Rutter wrote:
> | If we make the beta debs of R available for Ubuntu, I think they
> | should be in a separate repository, as not to be pushed to people
> | uncomfortable with beta software.  If we went down this path, we could
> | also limit ourselves to the latest Ubuntu release as well as the
> | latest long term service release versions of Ubuntu.
> |
> | I do not use bioconductor, so I have to ask how many packages are
> | built in the approximately one month period the R beta is available
> | for public release?   I visited the web site, and there is a devel
> | branch.  Are all of those packages built against R 2.9?
> |
> | My personal opinion is that we should not follow the google definition
> | of beta, and reserve the tag for testing purposes.  If you want to
> | test the beta version, there should be a minimum amount of "expertise"
> | required for entry.  For Ubuntu, having to compile from source could
> | be that bar.  We could supply directions on how to build from the deb
> | source packages.  It would probably need a script that makes the
> | corrections needed to compile under Ubuntu.
>
> I agree. I think we should not push down 2.9.0 on all Ubuntu users.
>
> Paul, given that Debian does have the 2.9.0 deb files ready
> for the picking, you could also try a chroot or virtual machine running
> Debian unstable.  By using a virtual machine (like virtualbox, very easy to
> set up in stock Ubuntu) you get a way to have the bleeding edge software
> running on your system without affecting the general stability of your
> system.
>
> Otherwise, take the Debian .deb source and ask us for help with local package
> builds based on those source (as e.g. right now where Debian's package has a
> debian/rules which uses dh_prep which you need to turn back to dh_clean etc
> pp).  I sometimes do that at work (eg to get current Debian MPI packages onto
> Ubuntu etc).

Would it be reasonable to put the beta version of the source packages
(and only the source packages) on the CRAN repository?  That way, the
response to those who want to try out the beta test version of the
Debian package could be to use

wajig build-depend r-base
wajig build r-base

and it should not, AFAIK, interfere with those who install the binary
versions of the package.