I feel your pain. At my workplace, the network administrators insist that anything that is to be distributed across the network be packaged up in an RPM. I have my own library of packages accessible to my section members, but when I want to make something available to everyone, I have to create an RPM.
After many trials and tribulations, here is the rpm spec file I created for Prof. Ripley's RODBC package. A few things to note: 1. R-2.4.0 was installed in /opt/r-2.4.0 by an RPM called R-arc 2. I create /opt/r-2.4.0/lib/R/src and unpack the source package there, so my users can look at the original code if they want to. 3. The rpm does R CMD INSTALL pkg twice: once when it is installing the rpm, and again in the post-install step. The reason for the second pass is to insure that the help index files get rebuilt with all of the packages that are installed in the production directory. My other rpms are similar to this one. With that, here is the spec file: -- Jeff %define rversion 2.4.0 %define rtopdir /opt/r-%{rversion} %define rhome %{rtopdir}/lib/R %define rbin %{rhome}/bin/R %define rSourcePackageDir %{rhome}/src %define rBinaryPackageDir %{rhome}/library %define arcrel 9 Name: R-rodbc-arc Version: %{rversion} Release: 1.1.REV.%{arcrel} Summary: Package ODBC Interface for R License: free Requires: R-arc >= %{rversion} Provides: R-rodbc Group: Applications/Engineering Source0: %{name}-%{version}.tar.gz Buildroot: /tmp/%{name}-%{version} %description CRAN version 1.1-7 of RODBC, an ODBC interface for R. %prep %build %install [ "%{buildroot}" != "/" ] && rm -rf %{buildroot} mkdir -p %{buildroot}%{rBinaryPackageDir} mkdir -p %{buildroot}%{rSourcePackageDir} mkdir -p %{buildroot}%{rhome}/doc/html/search cd %{buildroot}%{rSourcePackageDir} tar -xzf $RPM_SOURCE_DIR/%{name}-%{version}.tar.gz %{rbin} CMD INSTALL -c -l %{buildroot}%{rBinaryPackageDir} RODBC %files %defattr(-, mathadm, appgrp) %{rSourcePackageDir}/* %{rBinaryPackageDir}/* %clean rm -rf %{buildroot} %post cd %{rSourcePackageDir} pwd %{rbin} CMD INSTALL -c RODBC chown -R mathadm:appgrp %{rBinaryPackageDir}/RODBC chown mathadm:appgrp %{rhome}/doc/html/packages.html chown mathadm:appgrp %{rhome}/doc/html/search/index.txt %preun ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel