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://fedorahosted.org/r2spec/

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.

'''Examples: '''

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.

Example:

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 $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_datadir}/R/library %{packname} (noarch) or R CMD INSTALL -l $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_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.

Most (if not all) R addon modules come with a built-in check. This can be triggered by running R CMD check. In Fedora, the check should be run in the %check section. Here is an example %check section for a Fedora R package:

Note that frequently, R packages have circular dependency loops when running R CMD check. If you hit such a case, you can comment out the check to break the dependency loop, and leave a comment explaining the circular dependency problem.

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 $RPM_OPT_FLAGS. 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.