R Packaging Guidelines

The generator adds run time Provides in the form of R(foo) = packageVersion.

The version from the metadata will be normalized (as specified in R version for package versioning).

The generator adds run time requires in the form of R(foo) (with versions as specified in the metadata if supplied.)

The packager MUST inspect the generated Requires for correctness. All hard dependencies (R’s LinkingTo, Depends, Imports) MUST be resolvable within the targeted Fedora version.

Unwanted dependencies may be removed by editing the installed DESCRIPTION file or using rpm’s %__requires_exclude (substitute suggests or enhances if necessary). For example, to filter out Suggests on foo, use:

To filter out multiple packages, use:

Note that you need to escape regular expression special characters with backslash and you need to escape said backslash for RPM.

Packages of R modules (thus they rely on R as a parent) have their own naming scheme. They should take into account the upstream name of the R module. This makes a package name format of R-$NAME. When in doubt, use the name of the module that you type to import it in R.

Many R packages contain '-' in their version. Usually, the versioning used is a sequence of at least two (and usually three) non-negative integers separated by single '.' or '-' characters.

To be consistent with the versioning system used in Fedora, you should simply replace dashes with dots.

Unlike normal Fedora packages, there is normally no separate %build actions (e.g. %configure)that need to be taken for an R package. However, it is important that all R module packages include an empty %build section, as shown in the spec templates.

Instead of calling make install, to install the R addon components, you need to run R CMD INSTALL -l %{buildroot}%{_datadir}/R/library %{packname} (noarch) or R CMD INSTALL -l %{buildroot}%{_libdir}/R/library %{packname} (arch-specific). Proper %install sections for Fedora R packages are demonstrated in the spec templates.

Most R addon modules generate a new R.css file, but it would conflict with the master R.css file, included in the main R package. You must delete this file, and do not include it in your package.

It is important to clean the R directory of binary files (*.o *.so) before running R CMD CHECK. Otherwise, the CHECK command will throw a warning about finding binaries in the source dir. This is accomplished by running (in %install):

This is demonstrated in the spec templates.

R addon modules come with a built-in check that can be triggered by running R CMD check. In Fedora, the check should be run in the %check section.

Packages in Suggests are often used in examples, tests, and vignettes, sometimes even in functions exported by the package. However, according to CRAN’s guidelines, R addons MUST work without the dependencies listed in Suggests. This means that they MUST check for the presence of a suggested package before running anything that requires it (in code, examples, tests, or vignettes). According to this, Fedora packages MUST drop from BuildRequires all packages in R’s Suggests to avoid circular dependency loops. As a exception to this rule, R addons that are mandatory for running unit tests in the first place (e.g. testthat, tinytest, and few more) SHOULD be kept in BuildRequires for the %check section.

By default, R CMD check checks for the presence of suggested packages, so export _R_CHECK_FORCE_SUGGESTS_=0 MUST be added to disable this check. Additionally, recreation of manual pages and vignettes, which usually use suggested packages, MUST be disabled with --no-manual and --ignore-vignettes respectively. Putting everything together, the %check section should look like the one in the example spec above.

If this default %check fails due to some missing suggested package, then it is a bug in the package. This SHOULD be reported upstream, and a workaround MUST be put in place:

Typically, R extensions do not contain license files per CRAN policy. R allows a set of open source licenses and R extensions just declare which one they adhere to. Following this policy, we do not require upstream R extensions to add license files.

The R CMD INSTALL operation will install all of the files, including documentation files. The doc, html and NEWS files/directories need to be marked as %doc. Note that other files, such as DESCRIPTION, INDEX, NAMESPACE, and help/ are not %doc, since proper R functionality depends on their presence. Be careful not to duplicate %doc files in the package, the spec templates provide good examples on how to package the R addon files without duplications.

R packages inherit their optimization flags from the main R package, which stores them in %{_libdir}/R/etc/Makeconf. The design of R is such that all R addon library modules use the same optimization flags that the main R package was built with. Accordingly, this is why R addon packages do not pass %{optflags}. Also, there is no simple way to pass special optimization flags to R CMD INSTALL.

R packages usually expect to find their header files in %{_libdir}/R/library/*/. rpmlint will complain that these files are misplaced, but this is safe to ignore.

You should still separate these header files into a -devel subpackage.

R2spec is an excellent little tool to assist in creating Fedora-compliant packages for R libraries. Using it as a starting point is recommended (but certainly not mandated). More information here : https://pagure.io/r2spec/