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How to properly integrate cran2deb into Debian?



First of all, this is very good news! Thanks to everyone involved for
the effort!

Am Freitag, den 18.02.2011, 11:35 +0900 schrieb Charles Plessy:
> For the addition to /etc/apt/sources.d, I think I recall that something similar
> was discussed on debian-devel@l.d.o or debian-mentors@l.d.o recently, and the
> feeling was strongly negative, see http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/2010/11/msg00174.html
> (Sorry that I could not find this reference faster and reply to an earlier email you sent)

Right, adding entries to /e/a/sources.list.d is a big no-no. This is and
should stay the administrators domain. The only viable approach here is
to create a package for this single file and make sure that *no* other
packages depend on it, so it does *not* get pulled in automatically. The
key to the respective repository could be added as well. But that is
just for convenience. It is basically a no-brainer to add that repo. And
it's not an issue for live-systems such as BioLinux, as they can
customize their system as they please.

Anyway, the question to me boils down to the one in the subject: How can
we properly integrate cran2deb-built packages into Debian? There are a
lot of useful packages in CRAN, and even if we're mostly concerned about
BioConductor at the moment, it would be nice to have the whole CRAN in
Debian.

The main problem I see is the copyright review. This is not done in
cran2deb (not for every file, at least) and probably the main concern
for ftp-master. I'm not sure how to solve that properly. Maybe a file
with checksums of all files in a tarball signed by a DD might suffice.
Or a signed debian/copyright file. (Just brain-storming.)

>From a technical point of view, this might be (relatively) easy, as the
source packages could be pulled and build via the buildd network. But
maybe there's complexity involved that I don't see right now.

Given that ftp-masters meet next month, it might be a good point for
their agenda? I could bring this up and maybe even meet with them to
discuss that, as they meet "just around the corner". Anyone interested?

Best regards,
Manuel


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