[R] RPMs for R on the Redhat EPEL site

[Marc Schwartz]

On Aug 2, 2009, at 6:02 PM, Waichler, Scott R wrote:

> Martyn,
>
>> The maintainer of the RHEL RPMs no longer has an i386 machine
>> running EL4, and cross-building on an x86_64 machine did not
>> work, so I did not distribute them.
>>
>> As noted in a previous thread, there is a project to port the
>> Fedora R RPMs to Enterprise Linux:
>>
>> On Thursday 23 April 2009 15:08:26 Marc Schwartz wrote:
>>> More info here:
>>>
>>>   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL
>>>
>>> and the specific link for R for RHEL 4/x84_64 is:
>>>
>>>
>> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/4/x86_64/repoview/R.html
>
>
> I went to the EPEL site, but it appears that the links to the R-2.9.1
> RPMs are just text files, ~17 km in size, e.g. the link below.  Do you
> know where the actual RPMs are?  I don't know what a "metapackage"
> means.
>
> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/4/i386/R-2.9.1-1.el4.i386.rpm
>
> Thanks,
> Scott

Scott, I am not on RHEL (or Fedora any longer) but my reading of the  
metapackage file contents suggests that it is designed to enable you  
to install both the R-core and R-devel RPMs using a single command:

   sudo yum install R

That is, I am presuming it can be used as an alternative to:

   sudo yum install R-core R-devel

The R-core and R-devel RPMs are the actual RPMS that will be  
installed. Consider the R RPM as a bundle or wrapper of sorts,  
directing yum to install the other two.

Presuming that you are set up to use the EPEL, go ahead and use the  
first command.

This approach of using the metapackage seems to be a logical step to  
enable folks who have been just installing the R RPM to default to  
installing both the runtime version and the devel version of the RPMs,  
since the latter will be required to install most CRAN packages from  
source on Linux. It will help to avoid a variety of headaches and  
likely, avoid some posts here from folks having problems.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz