R SIG Debian - Jan 2012 - Template for building .deb packages for missing libraries?

Greeting R debianites -

There are a number of R libraries I need debianized (for Ubuntu Maverick 
systems, if it matters) -- ISwR, Hmisc, mosaic, mosaicManip, HSAUR2 -- 
which I couldn't find debian packages for.

The structure of R libraries is so regular that I'm guessing surely 
there must be a template for creating debian packages for them, or maybe 
a set of instructions?

Does anyone have such a thing?

On 01/12/2012 05:08 PM, Patrick Goetz wrote:
>
> Greeting R debianites -
>
> There are a number of R libraries I need debianized (for Ubuntu Maverick
> systems, if it matters) -- ISwR, Hmisc, mosaic, mosaicManip, HSAUR2 --
> which I couldn't find debian packages for.
>
> The structure of R libraries is so regular that I'm guessing surely
> there must be a template for creating debian packages for them, or maybe
> a set of instructions?
>
> Does anyone have such a thing?
Patrick,

I would suggest the Ubuntu Packaging Guide 
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Complete) as a starting place, 
at the same time using one of the .deb packages found on CRAN as a guide 
to see what Dirk and I (mainly Dirk) add to the source file to create 
the package.  In fact, the first time I built a package from the .tar.gz 
file, I used a lot of the same files from an already existing .deb file.

Hmisc is available on c2d4u 
(https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/c2d4u) for Natty and Oneiric, 
but not for Maverick, the others you mention are not.

Hope this helps,
Michael

-- 
Dr. Michael A. Rutter
School of Science
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Station Road
Erie, PA 16563
http://math.bd.psu.edu/faculty/rutter

On 12 January 2012 at 16:08, Patrick Goetz wrote:
| systems, if it matters) -- ISwR, Hmisc, mosaic, mosaicManip, HSAUR2 -- 

Hmisc is a) dead upstream and b) replaced by 'rms' and c) still in older
distros; this is something I packaged years ago.

For the rest, Michael gave you the proper answer.  It is pretty easy to
create packages locally too if you just want them in your lab.

And to paraphrase Lessig's "code is law" it is also documentation.
Just look
at an existing package and start from there.

Dirk

-- 
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it
is too
dark to read." -- Groucho Marx