R-beta: installing the R- rpm in RedHat 5.0 --trouble !!

[Douglas Bates]

Trond Rafoss <trond.rafoss at planteforsk.no> writes:

> When I am trying to install the file " =
> http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/R/bin/i386-linux/RedHat-5.0/r-base-0.61.1-2.i3=
> 86.rpm"  on my RedHat 5.0 system I get the following message: =
> libncurses.so.3.4 is needed by r-base-0.61.1-2
> 
> Where is it possible to get this (preferably as an rpm)

I don't know if libncurses.so.3.4 is available for RedHat.  It may be
another case of version-skew in the numbering of libraries between
RedHat 5.0 and Debian 2.0.

The package you are trying to install was created by me on a Debian
Linux system running the "unstable" version that will become
Debian-2.0.  Like RedHat 5.0 this version is based on libc6.  After
creating a Debian package from sources, one can run it through an
automatic converter to create a RedHat RPM package.  That is how the
RPM file you are trying to install was created.

Earlier we had problems with the numbering of the libreadline.so
library.  The version numbered 2.1 under Debian is numbered 3.0 under
RedHat.  RedHat 5.0 comes with a libncurses.so.3.0.  That library is
also available for Debian but the most recent version of the library
is numbered 3.4.  I don't know what the differences are.  The
ncurses3.4 package in Debian is described as
 Package: ncurses3.4
 Priority: required
 Section: base
 Maintainer: Galen Hazelwood <galenh at micron.net>
 Source: ncurses
 Version: 1.9.9g-7
 Depends: libc6
 Description: Video terminal manipulation - shared libraries
  This package contains the shared libraries necessary to run programs
  compiled with the ncurses libraries.

The copyright file for the package states
 This is the Debian GNU/Linux prepackaged version of the ncurses
 library and terminfo utilities. ncurses/terminfo was written by Pavel
 Curtis and Zeyd M. Ben-Halim <zmbenhal at netcom.com>. Ncurses is
 copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 by Zeyd M. Ben-Halim.

 Galen Hazelwood <galenh at micron.net> created this package, from sources
 found under ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses.  It
 borrows heavily from the original debianization put together by Bruce
 Perens <Bruce at Pixar.com> and benifitted considerably from a lot of
 help from David Engel <david at elo.ods.com>.  Michael Alan Dorman
 <mdorman at debian.org> arranged the beast into its present form, and put
 a lot of effort into making ncurses fit with Debian in the best way
 possible.  His patches for packaging the ill-fated 4.1 release form the
 backbone of this version.  The current maintainer is greatly in debt to
 his illustrious predecessors.

Apparently the original sources are the file
  /ftp at ftp.netcom.com:/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses:
  total 2868
  drwxr-xr-x   2 3245     50           512 Feb 26  1997 .
  drwxr-xr-x   5 3245     1            512 Dec 16 01:11 ..
  ...
  -rw-r--r--   1 3245     50       1081067 Feb 26  1997 ncurses-1.9.9g.tar.gz

I think it is best for me to stop trying to provide RPM packages of R
by converting Debian packages.  We seem to be having too much trouble
keeping library versions consistent.  Others may be willing to
contribute native RPM packages to CRAN.

In the short term I could try to create a .rpm package from the
ncurses3.4 Debian package and you could install that.  I would not
prefer that as a long term solution because I don't know enough about
the libraries to take responsibility for others installing such
packages.

-- 
Douglas Bates                            bates at stat.wisc.edu
Statistics Department                    608/262-2598
University of Wisconsin - Madison        http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/
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