[R-sig-Debian] New libpng in c2d4u3.5 breaks many other packages

[Robin Lovelace]

Thanks for keeping us updated. Before I jump the gun and put this out on
social media (as a follow-up to this tweet
https://twitter.com/robinlovelace/status/990682038373158912 ), would you
say this is a reasonable message to send to the R-using Ubuntu community?:

Follow-on advice in case it's of use to any #Ubuntu + #rstats users out
> there: wait until Ubuntu 18.04.1 is released before upgrading to R 3.5.0.
> Should be sometime in August:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseSchedule + advantage of
> polished 'point release'.
>

It seems it's worth waiting for the point release in any case according to
Dirk, reinforced by Jeroen and supported by this thread:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029974/is-it-a-bad-idea-to-upgrade-to-18-04-right-now

I've stumbled across this guidance for people who are impatient - seem
reasonable advice this?:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1032842/r-rstudio-installation-script-for-ubuntu-18-04

On the topic of support, one thing I could offer is to work on the
documentation here: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README.html

Let me know if that would be welcome and where I should propose changes to
the source of this if that would be of use.

Thank you.

Robin


On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 11:57 AM, Michael Rutter <mar36 at psu.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 6:24 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > On 16 May 2018 at 11:59, Jeroen Ooms wrote:
> > | As of today many Travis users are seeing this error:
> > |
> > | The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> > |  libmagick++-dev : Depends: libmagickcore-dev (=
> > | 8:6.7.7.10-6ubuntu3.9) but it is not going to be installed
> > |                    Depends: libmagickwand-dev (=
> > | 8:6.7.7.10-6ubuntu3.9) but it is not going to be installed
> > | E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
> > |
> > |
> > | The problem is that a few hours ago a version of libpng1.6 was
> > | published to c2d4u3.5 which is not compatible with the version of
> > | imagemagick in trusty. Becuase libmagick++ is installed by default on
> > | Travis, this breaks almost all installations.
> > |
> > | I think it's best to only publish R packages in c2d4u, not system libs.
> >
> >
> In retrospect, I should have but this on the PPA the moment I created it. I
> have added it now:
>
> Under development. DO NOT USE: it will break things.
>
> - Under no circumstances would I use c2d4u3.5 for anything other than
> testing. As Dirk mentioned, I haven't announced it yet.  It is incomplete
> and at any moment, it will break your system.  In an hour, it may not break
> your system.
>
> - This will take time.  To rebuild the entire hierarchy of packages, in
> order, for three different releases, will take a lot of time.  Trying to do
> this a quickly as possible, but family and job have a higher priority.
>
> - Trusty is becoming increasingly difficult to build for, especially with
> Bionic added to the mix.  Non R packages have changed names, which can
> prevents a large number of packages from being backported.  I will be
> trying different solutions in order to build as many packages as possible
> while making the process robust.
>
> - I do appreciate notes about things not working, as I can't test every
> possible combination.  The best method is to send me an email, since this
> is still a work in process.
>
> Bottom line: If you rely on Ubuntu providing as many packages as possible
> for your R experience, the R 3.5 c2d4u-verse is not ready yet.  When it is,
> I'll let you know.
>
> Michael
>
>
> > Well but how come Travis looking at this still-unfinished and unannounced
> > PPA
> > for c2d4u3.5?
> >
> > My Travis setup isn't; I still use R 3.4.4 because, well, c2d4u3.5 is not
> > announced.
> >
> > (Maybe you should consider adding a local PPA with a (compatible)
> > libmagick++
> > and a higer version number.)
> >
> > Dirk
> >
> > --
> > http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > R-SIG-Debian at r-project.org
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
> >
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