#535 Adjust the place of DESCRIPTION in R packaging guidelines
Closed: Fixed None Opened 8 years ago by pingou.

In the R packaging guidelines [1] we recommand that libraries mark their DESCRIPTION file as %doc in the %file section.

It was reported to me that since R 3.x this breaks loading libraries on system that defaults to excluding documentation, system such as docker.

So I would like to suggest we move the DESCRIPTION files from %doc into the regular %files in the examples we provide as well as in R2spec.

FTR here is the email I received:
{{{
Thank you again for R2rpm, I have been using R2rpm generated packages for
many months now.

I have discovered a bug. I started installing R2rpm generated packages
with the Docker centos:7 image and discovered that R would not load my R
libraries. The core problem appears to be that R requires the DESCRIPTION
file to be present in order to load it. It is not merely a documentation
file, it is required to load an R library (R version 3).
It appears that a**excludedocs is turned on by default with the Docker
centos:7 image since it is a very minimal image.

<patch for R2spec cut out for this discussion>
}}}

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:R


As the R maintainer, this change makes sense. #easyfix

We discussed this at this weeks meeting (http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2015-05-21/fpc.2015-05-21-16.08.txt):

  • 535 Adjust the place of DESCRIPTION in R packaging guidelines


    (geppetto, 17:25:06)
  • LINK: https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/ticket/535 (geppetto, 17:25:14)
  • ACTION: Adjust the place of DESCRIPTION in R packaging guidelines
    (+1:6, 0:0, -1:0) (geppetto, 17:29:12)

Announcement text:

The R Packaging guidelines have been revised to indicate that the DESCRIPTION file should not be marked %doc, as it is actually required for operation of the R package and needs to be present even when installed with --excludedocs.

Metadata Update from @james:
- Issue assigned to tibbs

7 years ago

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