[R-sig-Debian] A guide to R packages for Ubuntu

Dominique Belhachemi
Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:40:00 -0000

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 6:19 PM, Michael Rutter <marutter.psu at
gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 30, 2012, at 2:20 PM, Dominique Belhachemi <domibel at
debian.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 5:13 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at
debian.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 30 July 2012 at 15:51, Dominique Belhachemi wrote:
>>> | Hi everyone,
>>> |
>>> | I am using the backports from
>>> | http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/lucid/ on Lucid and
would
>>> | like to create a bunch of additional r-cran packages on my
workstation.
>>> |
>>> | Where can I find the latest scripts to automatically create those
>>> | packages? Is https://r-forge.r-project.org/projects/cran2deb/
still
>>> | up-to-date?
>>>
>>> For Ubuntu, your best bet is Michael's PPA.  AFAIK it covers
"a large number"
>>> of package but does not quite have complete CRAN coverage.  See
>>>
>>>    https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/c2d4u
>>>
>>>
>>> For Debian, the less-well-known but equally impressive effort is by
Don. See
>>>
>>>    http://debian-r.debian.net/
>>>
>>>
>>> Our old cran2deb codebase is still there and at the core of both of
these,
>>> but they essentially branches or "v3.0" implementations.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks Dirk,
>>
>> http://debian-r.debian.net/ is what I need for Debian.
>>
>> For Ubuntu, Michael's PPA is huge, but contains only 1 package for
>> Lucid. So I will be using Don's github script's to re-build the
>> packages I need.
>>
>> Thanks
>> -Dominique
>
> I started working on c2d4u after lucid and decided it was going to be a lot
of work to start backporting, so I have been concentrating on the latest
releases.
>
> However, it should be possible to use "apt-get source" with the
c2d4u installed in lucid as only "deb-src", ignore the "deb"
part when adding the ppa to the /etc/apt/sources.list.  You would want to use
the natty series of source packages, as they will be as close to lucid as
possible.  That way you can download and build from the source packages, at
least allowing you to install the necessary dependencies via "apt-get
build-dep foo".
>
> Two words of caution with this approach.
>
> 1.  Do not add the "deb" line to sources.list.  It will cause
havoc looking for natty packages that do not exist.
>
> 2.  Even if you use the natty source packages, lucid will not have the
required versions for some of the dependencies.  This issue will still exist if
you use Don's github scripts, as there are differences between lucid version
numbers and what CRAN packages want.  Many of the packages will work fine, but
there will be some that will not build due to newer versions of packages not
available under lucid.
>

Thank you Michael,

I will try both, rebuilding your natty source packages, and using
cran2deb for building new R packages from scratch (those which are not
available in the repos).

-Dominique