On 6 April 2013 at 17:26, Andreas Tille wrote: | In http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=704805#10 Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: | | > I am not (yet?) sold: | > | > -- there is only one "provider" or r-api-* | | I can not parse whether this should be a question or a problem.
In more words: We only ever have one (1) package providing an R interpreter. That package is r-base-core. Because we only have one package, I do not see why we need an additional token r-api (or whichever wording we pick). Let's keep simple things simple. | > -- we actually do have a "greater than" relation | | This is the current implementation and this is not really helpful. Please demonstrate an actual fault in its design or implementation. We all have our priorities. To me, quite frankly a bigger issue is that some debian-{med,science} packages appear to get stale and are not being updated for years. | > -- the version numbers already solve this | | No, they do not. An API level is something else than a version number. Version are a (sufficient) superset. Don't get wrong: I very much welcome your suggestions and involvement. ${R:Depends} was a very good idea which eventually won even me over ;-) But on this, I am not buying the hype yet. Perl has 'api' virtual packages because Debian *has* multiple concurrent interpreters. If we are going to have a discussion then it should be about redesigning R installations on Debian to permit concurrent R-release and R-devel packages. Which may require r-api-$N packages -- concurrently. The current scheme, with its "few" packages, is fine. If I may, I'd simply suggest more frequent update of the CRAN packages. I update mine typically within a day to a week after they appear. Dirk -- Dirk Eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org