R 3.0; want to try again?

On Wednesday 27 March 2013 16:56:25 Allen S. Rout wrote:

So with a major new version of R coming along, it seems like a
reasonable point at which to try to pick up the "Let's make a CRAN repo
for the red-hat-like folks!" task again.

What road map do you propose?

What are the tasks that need to be done?

I'm kind of trying to make things look like a parade, so Pierre-Yves
feels like leading it. :)  I've put my oar into this project several
times, but I feel it's clearly his thing.  With that genuflection in
place, I'll steam on.

So previous conversations on this topic are visible at:

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.fedora

and it was about a year ago that I last got on this horse.  Threads
under the titles

"Trying to use current R2spec on RHEL"

and

"Planning for R-repo"

are, unfortunately, almost exactly as topical now as they were then.
*sigh*.  I should have kept up.


What I intend to do next is to try, again, to just download and use the
package.  I'm hoping that between my patches last year and newer RHEL,
lots of stuff will just work.


It's my recollection that the current code base works thus:

1) Calculate a heirarchy of packages:  Level zero doesn't depend on
anything, level one depends on level zero; and so on, with each new
level depending on things in lower levels.

2) Build successive layers of packages.

3) Once all the packages have been built, it's possible to run CHECKs.
The broad set of dependencies for CHECKs is a major pain in the
posterior, so ignoring it to begin with seems reasonable.

Ref:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.devel/21494/focus=21496


4) Promote packages that have been CHECKED to a repo.  Should sign, etc.


My biggest knowledge gaps here are related to fedora-land build habits.
 I get scolded by the elect about running RPM work as root, and I get
that;  but I have not anywhere found something like a recipe:

"
OK, you've got a RHEL box.  In order to get it set up to build stuff
like Fedorites prefer, do these things:

+ Install EPEL
+ conventional working users
+ magic mock chicken-dance
+ blah blah that I don't know about.
"

If anyone here watching knows where the primer might be found, I'd love
to read it.


- Allen S. Rout