[R-sig-Debian] Help for sources.list

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Ted,

On 5 June 2010 at 14:23, (Ted Harding) wrote:
| Greetings!
| I would be very grateful if someone could supply a suitable
| line to enter into /etc/apt/sources.list for the benefit of
| a complete dummy user (i.e. me -- I do not want to have to
| do any interpretation, guesswork, reading of docs, etc.;
| I want to just copy it in).
| 
| The machine in question is an Intel laptop, wuth Debian Lenny
| (according to the Debian website the current stable version
| as of 12 Feb 2010). The current contents of /etc/apt/sources.list
| are:
| =======
| deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
| deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
| 
| deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
| deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
| 
| deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
| deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main
| 
| deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org lenny main
| =======
| 
| I had not been using this machine for running R, until I tried it
| yesterday and was shocked to find that the R version installed is
| 
|   R 2.7.1 (2008-06-23)
| 
| compared with the version I have on my regular machine, which is
| R 2.11.0 (2010-04-22). Then I was shocked, on visiting the Debian
| Lenny webpage, to find that the currently held version of R is

What part of "stable" is unclear?  When you opt for "stable", you ask Debian
not to change your packages.

So remarking that it doesn't update your R package, or preferred editor, or
whatever, is inconsistent with what _you_ have chosen. A _stable_ selection
of packages.  I am not a native speaker of English but stable seems to imply
'does not change' reasonably well.  

So I am puzzled why this is so hard to explain.

Now, maybe you are complaining that Debian has too few releases which is a
different matter and requires a bit more of a meta-discussion.  Too many,
Ubuntu is a reasonable compromise between stability and bi-annual updates. I
use it myself, but I also use (and like) Debian testing. It depends.

But by choosing Lenny you got what you asked for.  Now, as you asked, ...

| the same as the above: "2.7.1-1+lenny" for all the basic R packages.
| No wonder I have not been getting updates!
| 
| I am located in the UK.
| 
| What should I put in /etc/apt/sources.list ? (Maybe more than one
| line, if that would be relevant to installing/updating a variety
| of R packages).

It is all documented, and a Google search for 'debian lenny R package' gets
me there as a first hit. See the bin/linux/debian/ directory of any CRAN
mirror.

There are occassional mistakes (as Michael Friendly recently noticed) but the
page makes an earnest attempt at documenting this so I won't repeat it here.
If you have suggestions to make it clearer, please let Johannes or us know.

This also gets discussed here regularly so you may find looking at the list
archives beneficial.

Good luck.

-- 
  Regards, Dirk