Is "cp -a" allowed in debian/rules?

[Douglas Bates <bates@stat.wisc.edu>]

I have a vague recollection of seeing some comments regarding flags
for cp that should be avoided in packaging scripts.  Perhaps this was
in the discussion of bashisms.

In creating the r-base package I need to manually copy a directory
tree into ./debian/tmp/usr/lib/R.  Right now I do this using "cp -a".
Is that practice frowned upon?  Would using tar for this be preferred?

I also have a question about lndir.  In creating the r-contrib package
of contributed libraries the installation scripts for the libraries
will try to install them in the current RHOME which will generally be
that /usr/lib/R directory mentioned above.  My current plan is to
lndir the /usr/lib/R tree into ./debian/tmp/usr/lib/R, change the
environment variable defining RHOME, go through the usual installation
script for an R library, remove the symbolic links for everything
except the ./debian/tmp/usr/lib/R/library directory and continue with
the packaging.  Are there alternatives that would be preferred?

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


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