Re: Bug#737533: ITP: r-cran-rnetcdf -- GNU R package that provides an R Interface to NetCDF Datasets

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Sebastian Gibb <sgibb.debian@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Andreas,

On Wednesday 05 February 2014 14:20:20 Andreas Tille wrote:
> please consider maintaining the package in Debian Science team.

I think to maintain the package in the Debian Science team is a good idea and I
just moved the repository to:
git://anonscm.debian.org/debian-science/packages/r-cran-rnetcdf.git

IMHO the package is ready. I asked Filippo Rusconi to check it.

Best wishes,

Sebastian

>
> Moreover please enhance the long description since not every reader
> knows about netcdf and it just helps people who don't if they realise
> tht this package is not for them without doing additional research.

Yes -- there are many people who want to use data stored as netcdf but
find it difficult to figure out exactly which tools they need for a the files they

want to use.

> Kind regards and thanks for your ITP
>
> Andreas.
>
> On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 03:59:08PM +0100, Sebastian Gibb wrote:
> > Package: wnpp
> > Severity: wishlist
> > Owner: Sebastian Gibb <sgibb.debian@gmail.com>
> >
> > * Package name : r-cran-rnetcdf
> >
> > Version : 1.6.1-2
> > Upstream Author : Pavel Michna <michna@giub.unibe.ch>
> >
> > * URL :
> > http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RNetCDF/index.html * License
> > : GPL>=2
> >
> > Programming Lang: R
> > Description : GNU R package that provides an R Interface to NetCDF
> > Datasets
> >
> > This package provides an interface to Unidata's NetCDF library functions
> > (version 3) and furthermore access to Unidata's UDUNITS calendar
> > conversions.

As noted above, RnetCDF is for NetCDF version 3, although some things may "just work" with
NetCDF4 if RnetCDF is linked against a NetCDF4 enabled library. In practice, R users can

have very different results depending on the dynamic libraries available on their platforms.

There are a couple important and overlapping use cases:

1) NetCDF-CF, which may also require udunits2.

2) NetCDF files with georeferenced data

A couple of other R libraries were mentioned in this thread. It is worth mentioning that rgdal can also be built with NetCDF or hdf5 support. NetCDF4 builds on the hdf5 library, so some people just use hdf5 tools to read NetCDF4 data.

There is also netcdf-java with rJava, e.g., <https://meteo.unican.es/trac/wiki/EcomsUdg/RPackage>.

--
George N. White III <aa056@chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia