Am I correct in thinking that the ?SystemRequirements? field in a package DESCRIPTION file is purely descriptive, there are no standard elements that can be extracted by parsing it and used automatically? This field does not seem to be widely used, even for some obvious cases like backend database driver requirements, perl, perl modules, etc. It might help to have a list of possibilities. Some I think about immediately are SQLLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, ODBC, Perl, Perl_CSVXS, MPI, rpcgen, Oracle-license, Bloomberg-license and Fame-license. Maybe there could be a generic OTHER_* for things not in a standard list? Paul
On 12/12/2012 18:33, Paul Gilbert wrote:> Am I correct in thinking that the ?SystemRequirements? field in a > package DESCRIPTION file is purely descriptive, there are no standard > elements that can be extracted by parsing it and used automatically?No. -- 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
On 12-12-12 02:19 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:> On 12/12/2012 18:33, Paul Gilbert wrote: >> Am I correct in thinking that the ?SystemRequirements? field in a >> package DESCRIPTION file is purely descriptive, there are no standard >> elements that can be extracted by parsing it and used automatically? > > No. >Where can I find more details? The section "The DESCRIPTION file" in "Writing R Extensions" says only: Other dependencies (external to the R system) should be listed in the ?SystemRequirements? field, possibly amplified in a separate README file. Thanks, Paul
I see three references to systemRequirements in Writing R Extensions.
The one you list in your last email, this one:
"If your package requires one of these interpreters or an extension
then this should be declared in the ?SystemRequirements? field of its
DESCRIPTION file." [for listing interpreters to run scripts]
and
"If you really must assume GNU make, declare it in the DESCRIPTON file by
SystemRequirements: GNU make"
A grep of a complete R 2.15-2 source tree doesn't show it being used
either. It's mentioned in the OONEWS file for R 1.7.0
"It is now recommended to use the 'SystemRequirements:' field in
the
DESCRIPTION file for specifying dependencies external to the R
system."
Grepping all the DESCRIPTION files on my work box shows such values
for that field as:
"GRASS (>=6.3)"
"An ODBC3 driver manager and drivers"
"libxml2 (>=2.6.3)"
"OpenGL, GLU Library, zlib (optional), libpng)
"for building from source: GDAL >= 1.6.0 library"
some of which look pretty free-form descriptive to me.
Hope that's a bit more useful than 'No'.
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 7:55 PM, Paul Gilbert <pgilbert902 at gmail.com>
wrote:>
>
> On 12-12-12 02:19 PM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>> On 12/12/2012 18:33, Paul Gilbert wrote:
>>> Am I correct in thinking that the ?SystemRequirements? field in a
>>> package DESCRIPTION file is purely descriptive, there are no
standard
>>> elements that can be extracted by parsing it and used
automatically?
>>
>> No.
>>
>
> Where can I find more details? The section "The DESCRIPTION
file" in
> "Writing R Extensions" says only:
>
> Other dependencies (external to the R system) should be listed in
> the ?SystemRequirements? field, possibly amplified in a separate
> README file.
>
> Thanks,
> Paul
>
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