[Rd] Building R under Linux - library dependencies

[Paweł Piątkowski]

> You are not enumerating your trade-offs very well. There are natural
> conflicts. What is you really want?
> 
> - Being able to pre-build and distribute?  We have done that since the last
> 5C1990s with .deb packages.
> 
> - Being able to install with minimal size?  Have you queried your users?  I
> note that among the Docker containers for R (in the "Rocker" project Carl and
> I run) the _larger_ ones containing RStudio plus optionally "lots from
> hadley" plus optionally lots of rOpenSci tend to me _more_ popular (for ease
> of installation of the aggregate).
> 
> And while share the overall sentiment a little bit, you have to realize that
> it is 2016 with the corresponding bandwith and storage:
> 
>   edd at max:~$ du -csh /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/
>   1.5G    /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/
>   1.5G    total
>   edd at max:~$
> 
> And that it _outside_ of R itself, or the (numerous) other shared libraries.

OK, to be honest, it was rather a proof-of-concept than a specific idea. Other interpreted and VM-based languages have robust app deployment systems with smaller footprint, so I thought that it would be nice to have something similar in R.
Maybe you are right and neither R developers, nor users actually need it.

Thanks for the discussion,
-p-