R Ubuntu Blog

A blog about using R in Ubuntu and maintaing packages for Ubuntu

June 9th, 2018 c2d4u Update: 81 updated/new packages

Weekly c2d4u update. 81 packages either updated or new. Package of note this week is sp, a workhorse package for spatial data in R. The issue for Ubuntu is that the binary package has an epoch number of 1 (1:1:1.3-1 to be exact). These epoch numbers are often used in Debian/Ubuntu when the version numbering scheme changes, and the new version is lower than the old version. By adding the “1:”, Ubuntu can deal with the change in numbering correctly.

June 2nd, 2018 c2d4u Update: 21 updated/new packages

Small weekly update to c2d4u. 21 packages in total either updated or new. PPA for pacakges built against R 3.4.*: c2d4u PPA for pacakges built against R 3.5.*: c2d4u3.5 package r_version BART 1.7 BAS 1.5.1 BoSSA 3.3 CompRandFld 1.0.3-5 Compositional 3.1 DepthProc 2.0.3 FixedPoint 0.5 GDINA 2.1.15 HH 3.1-35 MOCCA 1.3 OBsMD 3.0 PBSmapping 2.

c2d4u Update: Adding New Bioconductor Release

When R 3.5 was released, the good folks at the Bioconductor project also released a new version, 3.7. Since I was rebuilding for R 3.5, I didn’t immediately include the updates to Bioconductor in my builds. I have now taken the time to include the update, so there are an additional 83 updated/new packages on c2d4u. (3.4 or 3.5 versions) My PPAs do not provide all the Bioconductor packages. Some are included in a CRAN Task View, therefore they are included in c2d4u.

c2d4u Update: 230 New and Updated Pacakges

On the c2d4u PPAs, my goal is to update and add new packages (from CRAN Task Views) on a weekly basis, usually on the weekend. While I was building c2d4u3.5, I put this on hold, as I didn’t want to build new (to the PPA) packages at the same time as checking old ones. For this update, 230 R packages were either updated or added as new. At this time, I don’t provide information that distinguishes between updated or new, but that feature may be added in the future.

Announcing cran2deb4ubuntu3.5

After building 10,742 packages on Launchpad, I would like announce that cran2deb4ubuntu3.5 (c2d4u3.5 for short) is now available for testing and maybe even actually use. It wasn’t difficult to find if you know your way around launchpad, but you can find the PPA here: https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/ubuntu/c2d4u3.5 Many things to consider before you add this PPA to your Ubuntu machine. The PPA supplies binaries for Trusty (14.04), Xenial (16.04), and Bionic (18.

Adding jq library to Trusty and Xenial PPAs

One of the advantages of using Launchpad’s PPA system is that it allows you to easily use the work of others backporting packages to older releases. For example, the package jgr has a build requirement of libjq. jq is a command-line JSON processor, and the jqr package is required by a small number of other R packages, either directly or indirectly. The Ubuntu packages libjq-dev is available in Bionic, but not be default in Trusty or Xenial.

Replacing weatherunderground.com data with...weatherunderground?

One of the research projects I have been working on for many years is a model that predicts E. coli levels at Presque Isle State Park beaches in Erie, PA. Presque Isle State Park brings in approximately 4.5 million visitors a year, and thanks to the Pennsylvania State Park system, is 100% free to use. A variety of different tools are used to protect swimmers from harmful bacteria, including my random forest model RoboHarry, named after the former lead ranger at the park.

Update on the Move to R 3.5.0

I am slowly rebuilding the set of packages in c2d4u for use with R 3.5.0. Since packages built under version 3.4.* are not compatible with 3.5.0, they all need to be rebuilt. This includes the packages that came with the new Ubuntu Bionic (18.04) release. It is taking some time. One of the challenges with using Launchpad is that once a package is built, it needs to be published. This takes some time (around 20 minutes).