[R-sig-Fedora] Fedora 29 upgrade: texlive-scheme-medium may depend on R (texlive-includernw)

[Andreas Storvik Strauman]

> Texlive packages don't require anything at build time, so Andreas has
> nothing to do with this issue.


I will then conclude my immediate involvement after this point. If Tom

or anyone affiliated with Fedora development have any questions in

regards to includeRnw I will be happy to attempt answering them.


>  The description of his package claims that R and knitr are required at run time

This is correct.


> having an R installation under your home directory is not a typical case


As far as includernw is concerned, it assumes that there is an R installation that is available

by using the R command in shell scope. I will consider making the R installation path a package

option for the end user to set.


> had to take a decision: either to avoid
> non-texlive dependencies, which results in a broken installation
> (texlive-includernw won't work without R), or to be more user-friendly
> and install all the required run time dependencies.


For what it's worth, as much as I understand Rogers position, R is a very widely used

statistics tool, and for the Texlive scheme in question, I ultimately agree with Tom's

choice in this matter.


- Andreas Strauman

________________________________
From: I�aki Ucar <iucar using fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2018 7:42:23 PM
To: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
Cc: Andreas Storvik Strauman; r-sig-fedora using r-project.org; Tom Callaway
Subject: Re: [R-sig-Fedora] Fedora 29 upgrade: texlive-scheme-medium may depend on R (texlive-includernw)

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 at 19:12, Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand using nhh.no> wrote:
>
> My point exactly. It should only run R RHOME to check for the existence of
> R (if this is what it does) at run time, not at install time. If it then,
> at run time, does not find R, or having found R does not find knitr
> (though Sweave is part of utils, so knitr is only needed by those using
> knitr to weave Rnw documents, or to convert from Rmd), it should issue
> helpful error messages to tell the user to install R, or to install knitr
> within R. By requiring to see R when being run by root/admin at install
> time, it is making invasive assumptions about the user environment.
>
> It could be that the texlive-includernw package itself does not require
> install time dependency fulfillment, and that this is something only the
> Fedora texlive packager has mis-understood.

Texlive packages don't require anything at build time, so Andreas has
nothing to do with this issue. The description of his package claims
that R and knitr are required at run time, so the Fedora packager (Tom
'spot' Callaway, in CC now) had to take a decision: either to avoid
non-texlive dependencies, which results in a broken installation
(texlive-includernw won't work without R), or to be more user-friendly
and install all the required run time dependencies.

Tom took the second path, as he did too with texlive-graphicxpsd, for
instance, which requires ImageMagick. Of course, this doesn't work for
you, but admittedly, having an R installation under your home
directory is not a typical case. I don't know whether there's any
official packaging guideline about this (i.e., non-texlive
dependencies vs. installing non-working texlive packages). If not, you
could ask Tom to reconsider his decision.

I�aki

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