R SIG Debian - Mar 2013 - downgrading to R 2.15.1-4 from sid beta 3.0.0

Hi,

I'm using sid, and this morning I carelessly upgraded R core packages,
which are currently at the beta 3.0.0 version.  I hadn't read that
packages need to be re-built to be used with this beta version.  I'd
happily do that locally (via 'install.packages') for those that
haven't
yet been re-built in Debian, but some just don't allow that, notably
nlme which has a Depends on R (? 2.14.0), R (< 3.0.0)...  So I decided
to just downgrade the base packages, temporarily remove the r-cran-*
dependendants, and then install nlme (and others) locally until the
April release of 3.0.0 and the rest of the packages get rebuilt in
Debian.

Is there a more efficient way to deal with this when a new R requires
such rebuilds in Debian?

Thanks,

-- 
Seb

On 25 March 2013 at 12:01, Sebastian P. Luque wrote:
| Hi,
| 
| I'm using sid, and this morning I carelessly upgraded R core packages,
| which are currently at the beta 3.0.0 version.  I hadn't read that
| packages need to be re-built to be used with this beta version.  I'd
| happily do that locally (via 'install.packages') for those that
haven't
| yet been re-built in Debian, but some just don't allow that, notably
| nlme which has a Depends on R (? 2.14.0), R (< 3.0.0)...  So I decided
| to just downgrade the base packages, temporarily remove the r-cran-*
| dependendants, and then install nlme (and others) locally until the
| April release of 3.0.0 and the rest of the packages get rebuilt in
| Debian.
| 
| Is there a more efficient way to deal with this when a new R requires
| such rebuilds in Debian?

a) You are on unstable... So sorry for the breakage but that is why
'production' should run testing or stable.

b) There is a simple update.package() invocation you can do, it will update
all you packages (in /usr/lib/R as well as /usr/local/lib/R); it needs an
argument you need to set...

c) If you must downgrade, I would downgrade to 2.15.3-2 from CRAN rather than
2.15.1.

Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com