On Thu, 15 May 2025 at 11:42, Jeroen Ooms <jeroeno...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, May 14, 2025 at 11:05 PM Simon Urbanek > <simon.urba...@r-project.org> wrote: > > > > Can you give an example, please? I wonder if there is a real use-case or > > just bad package design. > > The case that bit me yesterday was a Bioconductor package Rigraphlib, > see > https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/src/contrib/Rigraphlib_1.0.0.tar.gz > > This package builds a static library entirely from a configure script. > Because there is no 'src' dir, we assumed the package to be all-arch, > and get linking errors when trying to use it on another arch then it > was built for. Arguably this is indeed bad package design, but that is > hard to protect against.
The opposite case is also true: there is a src directory but no compilation happens. This is a problem for deb/rpm shipment for two reasons. In rpm packaging at least, archful packages are inspected to extract debuginfo; since there is no compiled output there, this fails and the whole build fails. If the build succeeds (e.g. debuginfo is disabled), then we are building the same thing for all architectures, when there should be just one, noarch, for all. I can list at least 3 examples of this: - BANOVA: requires compilation, there is a src directory, nothing happens there, no source files, just a Makefile sitting there. - mixl: same, and the Makefile is just used to print if OpenMP is supported (?). - mathjaxr: same, and the Makefile is used to install a javascript library (!). > > I wouldn't think that should happen as configure is supposed to only guide > > the compilation in src - if there is no src no binaries are expected as the > > package did not provide any native sources hence there should be no binary > > content. This looks like something that could be added to R CMD check? > > In that case maybe R should warn if it runs a package configure script > but there is no "src"? And check if NeedsCompilation: yes is set? > > One way or another, what matters is that when R runs configure or make > during install, the value in the "Built" field in the binary package > should contain the platform value. This is also important when distros > ship R packages in deb or rpm format, to prevent packages that have > compiled code from getting "Architecture: all" and be installed on the > wrong platforms. IMHO, the flag NeedsCompilation in the DESCRIPTION file should be the one and only source of truth here, regardless of the presence or not of a src directory. Then I see two paths here: - Either the developer is responsible for setting this flag, and the R CMD check should fail if it's yes but no compilation happens or the other way around. - Or R CMD build is responsible for setting this flag after checking if compilation happens or not. -- Iñaki Úcar ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
