R devel - Sep 2006 - R 2.4.0, methods and rebuild management

With R 2.4.0 around the corner, I intend to resume the usual process of
providing beta snapshot packages in Debian unstable. By updating them before
they hit 'testing', we give ourselves a nice window in which we can
update
the packages as needed so that once 2.4.0 comes out for good on October 3, we
should be in good shape.

But how can I effectively manage this?  Running 

	$ apt-cache search ^r-.* | \
	   grep -v "r-base\|r-doc\|r-gnome\|r-mathlib\|r-recom" | wc -l

leads to 80 entries all of which are indeed packages.  Is there a way to
proactively tell which ones use S4 and the methods package, and need updates?

Dirk

-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison

On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> With R 2.4.0 around the corner, I intend to resume the usual process of
> providing beta snapshot packages in Debian unstable. By updating them
before
> they hit 'testing', we give ourselves a nice window in which we can
update
> the packages as needed so that once 2.4.0 comes out for good on October 3,
we
> should be in good shape.
>
> But how can I effectively manage this?  Running
>
> 	$ apt-cache search ^r-.* | \
> 	   grep -v "r-base\|r-doc\|r-gnome\|r-mathlib\|r-recom" | wc -l
>
> leads to 80 entries all of which are indeed packages.  Is there a way to
> proactively tell which ones use S4 and the methods package, and need
updates?
Only with some difficulty.  Such packages ought to declare 'methods' in 
the Depends or Imports fields of their DESCRIPTION files, and most do. 
Exceptions found by 'R CMD check' are Hmisc e1071 gRbase kinship rggobi 
rstream startupmsg wavelets:  the checks used are not exhaustive.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595