R SIG Debian - Nov 2009 - cran2deb for Ubuntu?

Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else (didn't see it), but is
cran2deb fully compatible with Ubuntu?

Novice question: I use install.packages() within R. The pros of using
sudo apt-get instead seem obvious, but are there any cons I should
know about?

Thanks

-- 
Etienne Lalibert?
===============================School of Forestry
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
Phone: +64 3 366 7001 ext. 8365
Fax: +64 3 364 2124
www.elaliberte.info

On 11 November 2009 at 08:38, Etienne Lalibert? wrote:
| Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else (didn't see it), but is
| cran2deb fully compatible with Ubuntu?

To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever claimed it was. I have seen people
state that they use the packages [ that are built for Debian in a Debian
chroot ] on Ubuntu; I myself have not attempted that and am unlikely to do it.

| Novice question: I use install.packages() within R. The pros of using
| sudo apt-get instead seem obvious, but are there any cons I should
| know about?

Mixing the two can be confusing, but given how the library path is set up _in
the packaged version_ (as opposed to builds from raw R upstream sources) you
get a clean split of

    /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/        used by install.packages()

    /usr/lib/R/site-library		  used by r-cran-* packages
    /usr/lib/R/library			  used by 'core' r-cran-* packages

so apt-get will never install where install.packages() installs and vice versa.

One day we hope to have cran2deb for Ubuntu but the ETA is unknown.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.