Re: Build-Depends for CRAN packages
On 21 August 2020 at 05:58, Johannes Ranke wrote:
| Hi all,
|
| yesterday I wondered why the Build-Depends of CRAN packages that are uploaded
| to unstable are adapted to the current R version, as mentioned in the
| Changelog e.g. of yesterdays upload of mgcv:
|
| --------------------
|
| Betreff: Accepted mgcv 1.8-32-1 (source) into unstable
| Datum: Donnerstag, 20. August 2020, 18:06:49 CEST
| Von: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>
| An: debian-devel-changes@lists.debian.org
|
| Format: 1.8
| Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2020 10:41:33 -0500
| Source: mgcv
| Architecture: source
| Version: 1.8-32-1
| Distribution: unstable
| Urgency: medium
| Maintainer: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
| Changed-By: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org>
| Changes:
| mgcv (1.8-32-1) unstable; urgency=medium
| .
| * New upstream release
| .
| * debian/control: Set Build-Depends: to current R version
|
| --------------------
|
| I never got the point of why the adaptation of the build dependency is
| necessary or beneficial for these uploads of CRAN packages to unstable.
| Shouldn't they build at least on the previous R version, as demonstrated by
| the CRAN checks on r-oldrel [1]? It seems to me that compatibility with the
| previous release is implicitly required and -- at least to some degree --
| guaranteed by these checks.
Debian is independent of CRAN.
So when I as a Debian developer upload to _Debian unstable_ we ensure it
builds with Debian unstable in order to migrate to testing in order to be
cast one day into a new stable release.
That is simply a different set of requirements than we have at CRAN (where I
also upload a few things as a CRAN package author -- but into a very
different system).
| [1] https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_flavors.html
While CRAN has Debian flavours for testing, these tend to be the "testing"
rolling releases so we can't directly rely on them.
I think we are in basic agreement, and having done this here for so long I
often wondered if we could not have a more formal Debian <-> CRAN link. But
we don't right now. Hence Debian requirements only in the upload.
That said, it is also possible to systematically patch this. Michael seems
to cope fine at his PPA with the over 4600 r-cran-* packages for three Ubuntu
flavours.
Dirk
--
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd@debian.org
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