[R-sig-Debian] Cran2deb4ubuntu: An Update for 2014

[Michael Rutter]

I have been a little quiet on the update front for the past few months, 
so I thought I would give a quick update as 2014 begins.  Between 
increased responsibilities at work (pseudo-department chair) and some 
family health issues, work on 
[cran2deb4ubuntu](https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/c2d4u) 
(c2d4u) slowed a bit in the last half of 2013.  Here is the current 
state of cran2deb4ubuntu.

### Precise and Raring continue to be updated

During the last half of 2013, Precise and Raring have been updated on 
more or less a weekly basis.  In fact, additional packages from the 
[CRAN Task Views](http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/) have been added, 
bringing the total number of R packages available now exceeding 2000.

### Quantal has been removed from c2d4u

Although Quantal (12.10) is still supported officially until April, I 
have a policy of maintaining only three releases on c2d4u.  Space is a 
big issue, as well as trying to deal with build issues for 2000+ 
packages on four releases.  I will always keep the latest LTS (currently 
Precise) and the latest two releases updated and available.  With the 
release of Saucy, it was Quantal's time to go.  Base R packages will 
still be released for Quantal on 
[CRAN](http://cran.us.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/) and the [RRutter 
PPA](https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/rrutter).

### Saucy has been added to c2d4u

This took a while.  With the move to shorter support schedules (Saucy 
will only be supported until July 2014), I was hesitant to put the time 
into building 2000+ plus packages for a release with a life span of only 
9 months.  However, I have recently spent some time with the Python 
interface to the Lauchpad API, and have created a series of scripts that 
allow me to copy 95% of the packages from one release to another.  And 
that is how I created the Saucy c2d4u packages.

One problem with copying packages is that the have the same file name as 
the original packages.  Therefore, 95% of the packages in the Saucy 
c2d4u PPA have "raring" in the file name.  They still work in Saucy, and 
the only way you would notice is this if you closely watch apt output or 
the results of a synaptic search.  As long as you keep your version of R 
current, I don't see any reason why these "copied" packages will not 
work.  If there is an issue, please let me know.

### Changes going forward

I still plan on supporting only three Ubuntu releases at a time on 
c2d4u.  However, to save myself and Launchpad time and effort, I will 
only be building packages for the latest LTS (currently Precise).  Any 
other supported releases (Raring and Saucy) will now have the packages 
copied from the latest LTS to that release.  To help with this, I will 
be eliminating the release name in the package build.  For example, 
"lme4 - 1.0-5-1cran1precise0 " will become "lme4 - 1.0-5-1cran1ppa0". 
If the package was rebuilt especially for a non-LTS release, I will add 
the release name to the build.

If anyone discovers a copied package that does not work, let me know and 
I will add the package to a list to be built, not copied.  This move 
should also allow for frequent and timely updates.

Honestly, with the move to shorter support cycles, I think a majority of 
R users who use Ubuntu will stick to the LTS releases.  Therefore, I 
will concentrate my effort on those releases.  The non-LTS releases will 
still be supported, but with the "copy" vs. "build" approach, I think 
the workload on my end will be more manageable.
-- 
Dr. Michael A. Rutter
Associate Professor of Statistics
Program Coordinator, Mathematics
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
4205 College Drive
Erie, PA 16563
http://math.bd.psu.edu/faculty/rutter
mar36 at psu.edu