[R-sig-Debian] Converting R package to Debian package

[Ashim Kapoor]

Dear all,

I am on a Debian buster system. I am a beginner to Debian packaging.

Here is my workflow for converting an R package which I call mypackage
into a Debian package:

1. I take an R package, say mypackage_2.1.tar.gz
2. I create it's copy as mypackage_2.1.orig.tar.gz
3. Then I untar the original tarball and create the mypackage directory.
[ I have installed dh-r helper function like this : sudo apt install dh-r ]
4. I goto the mypackage directory and do: dh-make-R
in order to create the debian directory.
5. Then I modify debian/control ( to make Source / Package entries
from: r-cran-mypackage into mypackage ) and similarly change
r-cran-mypackage into mypackage in debian/changelog (where I updated
the message to "Initial release").
6. Then from the mypackage directory I do : debuild

The above workflow FAILS with this error:

dpkg-checkbuilddeps: error: Unmet build dependencies: r-cran-dbi
r-cran-rsqlite r-cran-xts r-cran-zoo r-cran-foreach r-cran-domc

But when I check like this,it says the dependencies are THERE:

$ apt-cache show r-cran-dbi
Package: r-cran-dbi
Source: dbi
Version: 1.0.0-2
Installed-Size: 1931
Maintainer: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org>
Architecture: all
Depends: r-base-core (>= 3.5.0-3), r-api-3.5
Suggests: r-cran-rmysql
Description-en: GNU R package providing a generic database interface
 A generic database interface (DBI) definition for communication
 between R and relational database management systems -- similar to
 Perl's DBI system.  All classes in this package are virtual and need
 to be extended by the various R/DBMS implementations as e.g. RMySQL.
Description-md5: dc00e91ab4b239de079502722ee124b8
Homepage: https://cran.r-project.org/package=DBI
Tag: devel::lang:r, devel::library, field::statistics, implemented-in::r,
 role::app-data, suite::gnu, works-with::db
Section: gnu-r
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/d/dbi/r-cran-dbi_1.0.0-2_all.deb
Size: 788848
MD5sum: 82a1102a8f6b315b4cbce30edbdb9ed8
SHA256: 704d743feca0a028da369342fd5b0891758952877185b463db289b45f32c9c0e

When I do :

debuild -d

it does not check the dependencies and creates the package.

I have 2 queries though:

1. Why does it say unmet build dependencies when I know for sure that
the dependencies are present.
2. My second query is that : is there a way that instead of checking
for say : r-cran-dbi it checks that the corresponding DBI package is
installed inside R but perhaps by using the incantation
install.packages("DBI") and not from the r-cran-dbi Debian package?

Can someone please help me ?

Many thanks and Best Regards,
Ashim