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Automating package building packages and repository uploading

4 messages · Carlos J. Gil Bellosta, Brian Ripley

Original
Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
# 
Dear Rusers,

I have developed two packages for a client of mine. After new features
are added or bugs corrected, I upload them to my own web repository. I
create both source and binary versions.

In fact, I made an script that checks, builds, and uploads them via ftp.
However, I am facing two nuisances that do make it difficult to
automate:

1) Even if I build the binary version with the command

R CMD build --use-zip --binary $package

within my script, the output package still gets tarballed and gzipped
instead than simply zipped. I come around this automatically extracting
and compressing back the files but, am I missing something some other
option that would make all this simpler?

2) I expect my packages to be named something like
mypackage_1.3.12.tar.gz or mypackage_1.3.12.zip. However, "sometimes"
--I haven't looked at the code that decides the name to give to the
packages, so it looks quite "random" to me-- they get renamed into
something like mypackage_1.3.12_R_i486-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz or
mypackage_1.3.12_R_i486-pc-linux-gnu.zip. The problem is that, then, the
update.packages() function cannot find them. Is there a way to prevent
this trailing string from appearing in the file name? Or else, is there
a way to have update.packages() find the package regardless of it?

I am running

platform       i486-pc-linux-gnu
arch           i486
os             linux-gnu
system         i486, linux-gnu
status
major          2
minor          3.1
year           2006
month          06
day            01
svn rev        38247
language       R
version.string Version 2.3.1 (2006-06-01)

on Debian Etch with kernel 2.6.15-1-k7.

Thank you very much.

Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
http://www.datanalytics.com
http://www.data-mining-blog.com
Brian Ripley
#
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Carlos J. Gil Bellosta wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
binary Linux packages, it seems.  The latter are .tar.gz with the arch as 
part of the name.

.zip is used for Windows packages only.

update.packages for Linux is designed to look for source packages only: 
see the 'type' argument.  You can use the distro's packaging facilities 
for binary packages, and Dirk does for the Debian R distribution.

I think those misconceptions explain your confusion.

            

      
      
      
    

        

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
    

    

      
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Dear Rusers,

Well, then it seems that the problem is that I am building "linux binary
packages". Since I do not have any compiled code within --just R code--, their
contents should --and, in fact, are-- directly installable on Windows 
platforms
(which is what I intend to do).

If I understand things right, I could just rebundle the packages using zip
instead of tar | gzip and getting rid of the "arch" string in the file name.
They they would work on Windows. And they actually do when I do this by hand.

But, is there a less involved way to generate these binary Windows 
packages with
proper file names and compression method directly from my linux box?

Thank you very much,

Carlos J. Gil Bellosta
http://www.datanalytics.com
http://www.data-mining-blog.com

Quoting Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>:

            

      
      
      
    

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Brian Ripley
    

    

      
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On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Carlos J. Gil Bellosta wrote:

        

            

      
      
      
    

        
`involved'?  Not anything like as involved as working out what it is you 
are trying to do from your description which made no mention anywhere of 
Windows!

You can cross-compile the packages on your Linux box if you prefer, which 
will give you zips with the right file names.

Either way, you will be missing Compiled HTML help, which is likely to be 
the default form on Windows help in the next release of R.