[Fedora-r-devel-list] Re: R-devel going away

[George N. White III]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:52 AM, José Matos <jamatos at fc.up.pt> wrote:

> On Thursday 23 October 2008 23:08:53 George N. White III wrote:
>>
>> There have always been conflicts between the CRAN package system and
>> Fedora or other linux packaging Guidelines.   Users can install CRAN
>> packages without root privileges, but then the search function won't know
>> about the user's packages, and packages that rely on other library (gsl,
>> hdf5, etc) still need -dev RPM's.   Linux distros should not be trying to
>> enforce guidelines
>> for mainstream packages with their own robust package management and
>> archive networks.
>
> Playing devil's advocate I should remark that first each language is building
> its own repository and packaging system in a sense we have lots of equivalents
> of (yum+rpm) for each language (perl,  php, python, R, tex, ...).
>
> On the other hand for the system to be really useful it must use the least
> possible denominator (read the dumbest wins- pun intended ;-) ).

It is really a question of the minimal effort needed to learn how to install
the desired package.  People will try to to use a tool they already know, then
use the simplest tool.  There is an advantage to being able to use the same
tools on more than one platform.  R and TeX are a bit different in that many
users rely on them throughout their careers, using multiple platforms or
working with colleagues who use different platforms.  A colleague using
Windows says: "you should do (in R): install.packages('hdf5')".   When that
fails, that colleague is unlikely to know how to solve the problem.

There is another elephant in this room:  security policies are being revised
to require that end-user apps be installed and managed with user privileges.
In practice, large organizations are moving to a model where "root" must have
training/certification, with chargebacks when users need rpm package installs.
At such sites, users are going back to the pre-package days where apps are
installed from sources, or adopting a system like openpkg that uses RPM
packages but can (if used to manage only applications) be used without root
privs.   Sooner or later, linux distros will have to deal with this.


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