On Friday 29 March 2013 10:21:42 Allen S. Rout wrote:
> On 03/28/2013 04:25 PM, José Matos wrote:
> > On Wednesday 27 March 2013 16:56:25 Allen S. Rout wrote:
> >>
> >> So with a major new version of R coming along, it seems like a
> >> reasonable point at which to try to pick up the "Let's make a CRAN repo
> >> for the red-hat-like folks!" task again.
> > 
> > What road map do you propose?
> > 
> > What are the tasks that need to be done?
> > 
> 
> I'm kind of trying to make things look like a parade, so Pierre-Yves
> feels like leading it. :)  I've put my oar into this project several
> times, but I feel it's clearly his thing.  With that genuflection in
> place, I'll steam on.
> 
> So previous conversations on this topic are visible at:
> 
> http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.fedora
> 
> and it was about a year ago that I last got on this horse.  Threads
> under the titles
> 
> "Trying to use current R2spec on RHEL"
> 
> and
> 
> "Planning for R-repo"
> 
> are, unfortunately, almost exactly as topical now as they were then.
> *sigh*.  I should have kept up.

It would be useful to have this in some other media (wiki-like...) so it is possible to add up.

> What I intend to do next is to try, again, to just download and use the
> package.  I'm hoping that between my patches last year and newer RHEL,
> lots of stuff will just work.
> 
> 
> It's my recollection that the current code base works thus:
> 
> 1) Calculate a heirarchy of packages:  Level zero doesn't depend on
> anything, level one depends on level zero; and so on, with each new
> level depending on things in lower levels.

This is already done.

> 2) Build successive layers of packages.

Something that is not present in pingou's (Pierre-Yves) work is some kind of metadata regarding the package dependencies on the fedora side.

If the packages are pure R it works but if the package needs some external library (e.g. zlib) then the compilation will fail. Last I asked pingou he said this was not yet taken into account.

What I would like to see is some kind of table where the external dependencies (buildrequires in rpm parlor) are. Something like:

R-package_1 zlib, hdf5
R-package_2 gmt
...
R-package_n libxml, libz

That is I would like to have the spec files automatically generated from the R metadata as well as from our complementary metadata.

> 3) Once all the packages have been built, it's possible to run CHECKs.
> The broad set of dependencies for CHECKs is a major pain in the
> posterior, so ignoring it to begin with seems reasonable.
> 
> Ref:
> 
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.devel/21494/focus=21496
> 
> 
> 4) Promote packages that have been CHECKED to a repo.  Should sign, etc.
> 
> 
> My biggest knowledge gaps here are related to fedora-land build habits.
>  I get scolded by the elect about running RPM work as root, and I get
> that;  but I have not anywhere found something like a recipe:
> 
> "
> OK, you've got a RHEL box.  In order to get it set up to build stuff
> like Fedorites prefer, do these things:
> 
> + Install EPEL
> + conventional working users
> + magic mock chicken-dance
> + blah blah that I don't know about.
> "
> 
> If anyone here watching knows where the primer might be found, I'd love
> to read it.

The page is
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock

and
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds?rd=Extras/MockTricks

The important part is to add a local repository to the 

config_opts['yum.conf'] =...

part of the configuration files that can be found in /etc/mock/

This local repository will be refreshed with the new packages as soon as each level is completed.

Last time I tried I found 9 levels from CRAN packages.

> - Allen S. Rout

Regards,
-- 
José Abílio

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