[R-sig-Fedora] R binaries for Fedora 17.

[Marc Schwartz]

On Aug 2, 2013, at 5:01 AM, Rolf Turner <rolf.turner at xtra.co.nz> wrote:

> 
> 
> I am currently (still) running Fedora 17 --- having not managed to screw my courage to the sticking place and upgrade.
> Even though we are now up to Fedora 20, I think. The traffic on the Fedora mailing list on the upgrading issue is a bit terrifying.
> 
> I would just like to confirm that:
> 
>    It is ***NOT*** possible to download a binary of R for  Fedora 17.
> 
> Is this correct?
> 
> My efforts to obtain a binary using yum install resulted in a binary for version 2.15.2.  (Whereas of course the source version available from CRAN is 3.0.1.
> 
> I just wanted to check that I am not doing something stupid (like maybe using an incorrect repository).
> 
> I presume that the latest version of R is available as a binary only for the last version (or last few versions) of Fedora.
> 
> Can anyone confirm my presumption?
> 
> No biggie.  I can build from source, and indeed have done so.   But downloading a binary is quicker and I'd just like to get straight what the true state of play is.
> 
>    cheers,
> 
>        Rolf Turner


Hi Rolf,

Fedora 19, just released last month, is the current stable version. 20 is not scheduled for release until mid-November at the earliest.

The problem is that Fedora 17 will be EOL'd "shortly", since the Fedora life cycle is to maintain a given version until one month after the +2 version release, which for 17 is 19. Each version has a lifecycle of roughly 13 months, since new releases comes out roughly every 6 months. As a result, no further updates for R, much less anything else (eg. bug fixes, kernel updates, security updates, etc.), for 17 should be expected at this point. 18 will similarly go EOL in December if 20 is released in November.

R 3.0.1 is available via the Fedora repos for 18 and 19. So you should really give strong consideration for updating your Fedora version, whether that be 'in place' or via a clean install. I used to do the latter, making sure that my /home was a separate partition, so that I could cleanly install a new version of the OS without losing my user folder tree. I have not used Fedora in several years now, so have not followed the current state of the upgrade process, other than having a general awareness of 'fedup', which is the new upgrade tool and I believe started with 17. 

Regards,

Marc Schwartz