[tex-live] inclusion of texlive-includernw

[Roger Bivand]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018, Andreas Storvik Strauman wrote:

>>  causing  havoc for those who upgrade texlive because texlive-includernw tries to
>> install R and many R packages without checking whether they are installed
>> elsewhere.
>
>
> Oh! I see. That's a problem.
>
>
>> I can't see a list of maintainers of  texlive-collection-mathscience, so cannot see how to get texlive-includernw de-listed urgently.
>
>
> I don't know who put it there! I do not know how it ended up in TeXLive 
> fedora, but I do have email addresses of some TeXLive guys, and I could 
> try to contact them?

Excellent, and congratulations on being included - it means others find 
your contribution useful! But please do try to investigate whether it is 
the inclusion in the collection (I believe this is the case) that causes 
the install-time checks, or whether it is a mis-understanding by the 
Fedora texlive packager.

>
>
>> ... should be re-written to check for dependency availability on R at the
>> level of the user rather than root at install time.
>
> Agreed.
>
>> This probably cannot be done.
>
> Agreed, but I'll give it a shot anyways.
>
>
>> The package should actually do the checking at run time only,
>
>> providing helpful messages only.
>
>
> At run time is better than install time, or no?
>
>
> I did not intend this package to cause any inconvenience, and I find it 
> extremely odd that it's actually attempting to install R-knitr?
>

That's what it does on Fedora. Maybe there are specification settings in 
the package (is the source on a repo, if so where?), but it could be the 
Fedora texlive packager.

Sorry to jump on you, but this cost me a good deal of worry before I 
understood why upgrading Fedora had installed an R rpm with R packages 
including R-knitr.

Roger

>
> ________________________________
> From: Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no>
> Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2018 6:59:52 PM
> To: tex-live at tug.org
> Cc: Andreas Storvik Strauman
> Subject: inclusion of texlive-includernw
>
> The inclusion in current texlive of texlive-includernw (depending in
> packaged systems on R-knitr, not a texlive component), and its listing in
> texlive-collection-mathscience, hence in texlive-scheme-medium, is causing
> havoc for those who upgrade texlive because texlive-includernw tries to
> install R and many R packages without checking whether they are installed
> elsewhere. I can't see a list of maintainers of
> texlive-collection-mathscience, so cannot see how to get
> texlive-includernw de-listed urgently. It should be free-standing only,
> and should be re-written to check for dependency availability on R at the
> level of the user rather than root at install time. This probably cannot
> be done. The package should actually do the checking at run time only,
> providing helpful messages only.
>
> The problem may be an over-ambitious Texlive Fedora packager - the issue
> hit me on upgrading from Fedora 28 to Fedora 29 today.
>
> Roger Bivand
>
> --
> Roger Bivand
> Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
> Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
> voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
> http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
> https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en
>

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en