[R-sig-Debian] Ubuntu cran2deb PPA

[Michael Rutter]

On 02/11/2013 12:27 PM, Tim Booth wrote:
> Hi Don,
>
>> I'm trying to keep it up to date, but there are definitely some
>> packages missing. If there are particular ones that you need which
>> aren't built, let me know, and I can go through and get them built.
>
> Thanks for the offer.  The ones I am after just now are:
>
> pcaMethods
> bitseq
>
> I think these will fail to build due to missing dependencies or similar.
> That's fine, I can fix the builds and package up dependencies.  I'm just
> after the auto-generated control/rules/copyright/etc. so I don't have to
> write these from scratch.
>
> And if you want me to contribute back then just let me know how you
> prefer me to do that.
>
> Cheers,
>
> TIM

Just a couple of things to add to the conversation.  I think there are 
three main components of these projects.

1.  Maintain a source repository.  This is not too big of a project. 
Once you understand the way cran2deb works and get it up and running, 
updating the source repository takes very little time.  Strange 
dependencies (sentences as opposed to package names, for example) and 
dealing with licenses are about the the only things I have needed to 
maintain on the source side.  Notice I didn't say creating sources that 
are guaranteed to build.

2.  Maintain a build server.  I didn't want to deal with this, so I used 
the PPA service on Launchpad.  The positive is that I don't have to 
maintain it.  The downside is that it is very particular about what I 
upload and it sometimes takes 10-24 hours before I know if the package 
can actually build (depends on load).  The one big advantage is that 
someone could create a bioconducter PPA and use c2d4u as a dependency, 
therefore preventing a lot of duplicate effort.

3.  Build packages from source.  This is very time consuming.  The 
subtle differences in packages between Debian and Ubuntu as well as 
between Ubuntu versions makes this a time consuming process.  This is 
why I only support the ~1100 packages contained in CRAN Taskviews. 
Anything more would be too much of a time suck on my part.

If someone wanted to extend c2d4u on the Ubuntu side, my suggestion 
would to grab the latest version of cran2deb and learn how to set up the 
source repository.  You would have to modify the code a little bit so it 
did not build the binary packages, only the source. Then you can build 
them for yourself on a local server or upload them to a PPA (I have 
separate code for that).  The other option is to use Don's repository, 
but you would need to change dependencies before you build the binaries, 
which is what I do with Dirk's Debian packages.  I have code for that as 
well.

Michael


> On Mon, 2013-02-11 at 17:02 +0000, Don Armstrong wrote:
>> On Mon, 11 Feb 2013, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>>> On 11 February 2013 at 08:41, Don Armstrong wrote:
>>> | On Mon, 11 Feb 2013, Tony Travis wrote:
>>> | > On 11/02/13 14:40, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>>> | > >[...]
>>> | > >Do you guys know about Don Armstrong's builder?  Effectively the successor to
>>> | > >my cran2deb efforts:
>>> | > >
>>> | > >    http://debian-r.debian.net
>>> | >
>>> | > Thanks for the heads-up about Don's builder.
>>> |
>>> | I'm trying to keep it up to date, but there are definitely some
>>> | packages missing. If there are particular ones that you need which
>>> | aren't built, let me know, and I can go through and get them built.
>>>
>>> I know how much labor it is to keep this up, especially with the growth at
>>> CRAN...
>>>
>>> Can you add a regexpy call that just prints a date to the homepage, or
>>> updates a 'LAST_RUN_AT.txt' file or something?
>>
>> Sure. It actually has most of the Debian stack
>> (dak,sbuild,wanna-build) running behind it, but I'll have it put the
>> date of newest uploads of source packages on the home page... and
>> maybe a list of what those packages are.
>>
>>
>> Don Armstrong
>>
>

-- 
Dr. Michael A. Rutter
School of Science
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Station Road
Erie, PA 16563
http://math.bd.psu.edu/faculty/rutter