[Rd] R 2.4.0, methods and rebuild management

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 18 September 2006 at 17:14, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
| On Mon, 18 Sep 2006, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| 
| >
| > With R 2.4.0 around the corner, I intend to resume the usual process of
| > providing beta snapshot packages in Debian unstable. By updating them before
| > they hit 'testing', we give ourselves a nice window in which we can update
| > the packages as needed so that once 2.4.0 comes out for good on October 3, we
| > should be in good shape.
| >
| > But how can I effectively manage this?  Running
| >
| > 	$ apt-cache search ^r-.* | \
| > 	   grep -v "r-base\|r-doc\|r-gnome\|r-mathlib\|r-recom" | wc -l
| >
| > leads to 80 entries all of which are indeed packages.  Is there a way to
| > proactively tell which ones use S4 and the methods package, and need updates?
| 
| Only with some difficulty.  Such packages ought to declare 'methods' in 
| the Depends or Imports fields of their DESCRIPTION files, and most do. 
| Exceptions found by 'R CMD check' are Hmisc e1071 gRbase kinship rggobi 
| rstream startupmsg wavelets:  the checks used are not exhaustive.

Ok, thanks for this.  I guess I should write a quick script to mirror or
download all DESCRIPTIONS files. 

Of those 'exceptional' ones you list above, e1071 is about to enter Debian to
I'll talk to the maintainer, and Hmisc + rggobi are among my packages; the
rest we don't cover.

Thanks, Dirk

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