[R-sig-Debian] "Graphics history" in UNIX

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 10 July 2010 at 14:32, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| 
| On 10 July 2010 at 11:54, Ross Boylan wrote:
| | On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 16:41 +0200, Scotti Roberto wrote:
| | > stimulates a very basic question: "Is it possible to avoid building
| | > from 
| | > source using R in Kubuntu?
| | > I shifted over from MS only recently. In Windows I used to easily 
| | > download packages and use them.
| | > Now, every time I downloaded a new piece, I had the impression that 
| | > building from source was necessary.
| | > Am I wrong?
| | > Many thanks Roberto
| | Generally, building from source is not necessary.  I think the other
| | responses agreeing that it is necessary were assuming you were
| | interested in some slightly exotic R package (which may be the case).
| | 
| | The point of most distributions is to provide pre-compiled binary
| | packages; particularly on Debian these are very good about indicating
| | what other packages they require.  If you use a tool like aptitude and
| | tell it you want package X, it will automatically pull in all other
| | required packages.  Ubuntu is a Debian derivative.
| | 
| | Both R and many of its packages are in Debian.
| | 
| | If you have a package that is not already built you can build it
| | yourself or use cran2deb (assuming it's on CRAN).  As others have noted,
| | cran2deb is only intended for Debian testing (aka squeeze) on some
| | architectures.  It's also currently a bit broken.  You can try using the

It is not broken; it is disabled for amd64 while we rewrite it. i386 works
better than ever.  And this has been discussed on this list before.  

Dirk



| | archive in another environment (e.g., Ubuntu), but if you want something
| | that is not a gamble for R, running Debian testing (maybe in a VM) would
| | be the safest route.  Of course, it's called testing rather than stable
| | for a reason.
| | 
| | I think the cran2deb packages, which are generated automatically, are
| | less likely to have complete dependency information than those in the
| | main distribution.
| 
| Huh?  If the info wasn't complete, they'd break. They don't break, so the
| info appears to complete. Please don't spread misinformation.
|  
| D.
| 
| | Finally, you expressed concern for your students.  You can build a
| | binary package locally and then your students can use it.  Doing so for
| | someone new to Linux is probably a heavy lift.
| | 
| | Ross Boylan
| | 
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| 
| -- 
|   Regards, Dirk
| 
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-- 
  Regards, Dirk