[Pkg-octave-devel] Re: Automatic generation of Debian packages from CRAN

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

(I never asked for my mail to be forwarded. Oh well...)

On 31 August 2006 at 21:41, Thomas Weber wrote:
| Hi Dirk, 
| 
| Am Donnerstag, den 31.08.2006, 11:25 -0500 schrieb Dirk Eddelbuettel:
| > Well, we came from the other end:  Essentially all existing CRAN package use
| > the same debian/* files, so we figured we may as well automate that.
| 
| How do you get the Depends: and Build-Depends: lines in debian/control?
| Is this done manually? 

Yes. 

Currently all r-cran-* packages (and the sibblings r-omegahat-*, r-bioc-*,
r-noncran-*, ...) are all manually created. 

But as they are so similar, we have been talking about a script to
autogenerate them. We have stalled drafts and alpha code, but nothing real to
show. In a final version, Build-Depends would still be manually edited for
those packages that need it.

| Or do you get them from the Suggests: line in the add-on package's
| DESCRIPTION file?

Combination. We use heuristics plus overrides where needed. Perl hashes are
used if found, else the heuristics apply.
| 
| (For non-Debian maintainers: these line controls which packages must be
| installed together with the current package on an end-user system or to
| be able to build it, respectively).
| 
| Is an R add-on package allowed to depend on other add-on packages (that
| is, how strong is the Suggests: in its DESCRIPTION file)?

Yes, R has its own Depends" mechanism, modelled on Debian. As all that works,
we just tie onto it.

| > where the key is that all Debian needs to do is to call R CMD INSTALL with
| > one argument for the install-directory redirection.  The rest is handled by
| > Debian's cdbs package that aids with all the base rules.
| 
| I just had a look at INSTALL.in in r-base's src/scripts/ directory.
| This doesn't look simple ...

Wrong place. That is R itself. Look at a source (or diff, really) for
r-cran-* as eg r-cran-tkrplot or r-cran-xml or r-cran-zoo or ...

Dirk

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