[R-sig-Debian] Upgrading R packages on Etch

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Ted Harding
<Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> Greetings,
> I've been trying to upgrade R packages on my Debian Etch
> (whose other upgrades I have been cheerfully going along
> with as they occur).
>
> When I did, just now:
>
>  sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
>
> I got:
>
>  Reading package lists... Done
>  Building dependency tree... Done
>  Calculating upgrade... Done
>  The following packages have been kept back:
>    r-base-core r-cran-boot r-cran-cluster r-cran-codetools
>    r-cran-kernsmooth r-cran-lattice r-cran-matrix r-cran-mgcv
>    r-cran-nlme r-cran-rpart r-cran-survival r-cran-vr
>    r-recommended
>  0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.

Hey, Ted:

Did you get to the bottom of this?

I got an email responding to my post in this thread that said it
seemed I was criticizing the people who make the packages.  I didn't
mean that at all and I'm sorry.

I mean that if there is a mismatch between the libraries you happen to
have on your particular system and the "standard" system that the
packager is using (and aiming at, doing things correctly), then it can
cause the exact problem  you are seeing.

I also agree with the post which says that you will get more
information about the possible library mismatch if you do

apt-get upgrade r-base-core

Also, as he says, there's a good chance that if you enable the
backports repository, there will be a version of the new R for the
libraries that might exist in the older Linux.

To me, the big uncertainty is whether your system is still in a
"standard" state, so that the repository packages will work.  If not,
you may need to rebuild the packages custom for your system.


-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas