[R] upgrading to 1.5.0/uninstalling 1.4.1 on Linux

[Martyn Plummer]

On 02-May-2002 Rajiv Prasad wrote:
> 
> Thanks to Peter Dalgaard and Ott Toomet for answering my question.  I'd stick
> with renaming the 1.4.1 R directories and files to have the old version run 
> for a while until I clean out any of my potentially broken R
> programs/scripts.
> 
> By the way, it does seem that building an RPM would be better for 
> uninstalling.  I have a couple of questions in this regard.  (This is getting
> a bit off-topic, so please reply off the list.)
> 
> 1. I'd like to get pointers as how to set up my own RPM build from R sources 
> (1.5.0 for now, later versions in future).

Documentation on rpm can be found here
http://www.rpm.org
including the book "Maximum rpm" by Edward C Bailey.  This is now a
little dated, but contains almost everything you need.

To build your own rpms you need to recreate the subdirectories of
/usr/src/redhat (on Red Hat) somewhere in your home directory. I have
done this in the directory "mybuild".  Then define this in the file
".rpmmacros" with the line

%_topdir        /home/martyn/mybuild

Unpack the source RPM using
rpm -i R-base-1.5.0-1.src.rpm

Change directory to mybuild/SPECS
Modify the R-base.spec file to suit your needs.
Rebuild the rpm binary with
rpm -bb R-base.spec

> 2. How would I handle installation/uninstallation of contributed packages?  
> Is it possible to build RPMs for them too?

It is possible, but not worth it.  R has a very good internal package
management system which provides most of the capabilities of RPM.

Martyn
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