On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Greg Minshall <minsh...@acm.org> wrote: > > is there a way of specifying this dependency in, say, the DESCRIPTION > file? (seems unlikely, as this is what the whole autotools/configure.ac > framework is supposed to deal with.)
As was mentioned, the SystemRequirements field allows for this, but the format is quite informal and hence package managers cannot automatically resolve such dependencies. A few years ago [1] it was suggested on this mailing lists to extend the DESCRIPTION spec with fields that allow package authors to specify which particular deb or rpm packages are required to build the R package. However this was shot down with the argument that it is not the responsibility of the package author to determine the required build/runtime dependencies on the OS of the user. Debian/Ubuntu users can take advantage of the "debianized" packages from cran2deb [2,3,4] which, among other benefits, do have the capability to formally declare external dependencies. Such r-cran-xx and r-bioc-xx packages will automatically install build/runtime dependencies when needed (e.g. libmagickwand-dev). Due to the limitations above, this system currently relies on 3rd party volunteers (with limited resources) to maintain a database [5] of "Depends" and "Build-Depends" for all R packages. Dirk Eddelbuettel, Michael Rutter and Don Armstrong are doing a great job to keep this system going and provide binary builds of many cran/bioc packages for the various deb distributions. Creating a debianized version of your own R package is quite easy too, and solves the problem at least for your debian/ubuntu users :-) I still think it would be useful to introduce a standard field/format somewhere in the R package metadata that gives package authors the option to suggest deb/rpm/homebrew dependencies required to build/use the R package. But for now the best we can do is provide manual instructions in the SystemRequirements+readme. Jeroen [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2011-February/059787.html [2] http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/papers/useR2009cran2deb.pdf [3] http://www.personal.psu.edu/mar36/blogs/the_ubuntu_r_blog/cran2deb4ubuntu.html [4] http://debian-r.debian.net/ [5] http://debian-r.debian.net/debian-r/c2d/ ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
