R devel - Mar 2010 - Idea for install.packages on (certain) linux distributions

Hello,

I do not know whether this idea would be considered useful or not. Or 
easy to implement.

But it is the case that on certain Linux distributions there are OS 
packages with precompiled R packages. However, install.packages (and 
related functions) download the source ones.

Would it be possible to add an extra "repository" (or option) on 
install.packages that would direct R to use the OS level package manager 
(apt-get, yum or the like) so as to install the precompiled packages 
from the distribution mirrors instead of the CRAN ones?

Best regards,

Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
http://www.datanalytics.com

On 01.03.2010 16:33, Carlos J. Gil Bellosta wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I do not know whether this idea would be considered useful or not. Or
> easy to implement.
>
> But it is the case that on certain Linux distributions there are OS
> packages with precompiled R packages. However, install.packages (and
> related functions) download the source ones.
>
> Would it be possible to add an extra "repository" (or option) on
> install.packages that would direct R to use the OS level package manager
> (apt-get, yum or the like) so as to install the precompiled packages
> from the distribution mirrors instead of the CRAN ones?
Beside the problem that there are several distributions with different 
OS level package managers that are not part of R, we can not guarantee 
that the relevant repositories are up to date (which we can control for 
CRAN, for example).

We have even discussed if it makes sense to provide Windows binary 
packages without compiled code through CRAN further on given that it is 
easily possible to install them from sources (even on Windows).

Best wishes,
Uwe Ligges


> Best regards,
>
> Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
> http://www.datanalytics.com
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Some time ago, I had some email discussion with Dirk E. about putting a
front-end on
install.packages to first look at the debian repositories for R and use them
before trying
to install from source. The code for this would not be very large. As Uwe points
out in
another posting, the issue then becomes one of repository maintenance. And as
more types
of installers get included, the code and the chance of package mismatches get
more risky.

However, where we have repositories, it may be useful to have example code to
try such an
approach. In pseudo-code this could be implemented without damaging
install.packages as:

    [start of my.install.packages]
    if (exist(local.install) ) {
            local.install(package)
    } else {
            install.packages(package)
    }

If anyone gets enthused about this, I'd suggest posting on R-wiki. Note that
local.install
will have to be pretty aggressive at checking the OS version etc.

JN


> Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:33:08 +0100
> From: "Carlos J. Gil Bellosta" <cgb at datanalytics.com>
> To: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: [Rd] Idea for install.packages on (certain) linux
> 	distributions
> Message-ID: <4B8BDE34.6070000 at datanalytics.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I do not know whether this idea would be considered useful or not. Or 
> easy to implement.
> 
> But it is the case that on certain Linux distributions there are OS 
> packages with precompiled R packages. However, install.packages (and 
> related functions) download the source ones.
> 
> Would it be possible to add an extra "repository" (or option) on 
> install.packages that would direct R to use the OS level package manager 
> (apt-get, yum or the like) so as to install the precompiled packages 
> from the distribution mirrors instead of the CRAN ones?
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
> http://www.datanalytics.com
>