suggestion box: private package repository container about rocker

[eddelbuettel]

Could you be more specific? Our Dockerfiles are public if you want to riff off them.

[andrewcstewart]

Yes.  A Docker container that hosts an R package repository that is served via http and can be added to one’s list of repositories via setRepositories(addURL=c()).  Does this sound interesting?

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On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 4:56 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel
[email protected] wrote:

Could you be more specific? Our Dockerfiles are public if you want to riff off them.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#79 (comment)

[eddelbuettel]

Do you really need docker for that? I just drop local repos (at work) onto a shared directory (via NFS) and have any odd apache server serve that directory. But if you badly want that Dockerized, maybe we can you you create such a Docker container?

[andrewcstewart]

Clearly you haven't seen this yet: :)

But yeah, that's probably what most people do now. Dockerizing that simple setup could still be very useful for orchestrating an entire R ecosystem in-house.

I understand you're trying to focus on just a few things for now. If I find some time to roll this into a container, would you be interested in putting it under the Rocker namespace?

[cboettig]

@andrewcstewart are you thinking about something that would also serve (say, windows) binaries, or just allow installing packages from source?

[eddelbuettel]

I think so. Both @cboettig and I have real jobs and many other things sucking up time, but we are open to hosting other Dockerfile, with the understanding that you'd maintain yours. We help, but we can't look after all of'em ourselves.

[eddelbuettel]

@cboettig That is still the same. You just run a script over a proper tree containing either source or prebuild binaries -- there is a function in either base R's tools or utils that does it -- and then serve the resulting PACKAGE{.gz}. Been there, done that (in-house that is).

[eddelbuettel]

In other words it is so simple that I never saw the need for something like miniCRAN by REvo's Andrie. Clearly I was wrong. Not a first time, and almost surely not a last time :)

[cboettig]

ha, always wondered how that worked. Seems like that would only give you
binaries for the current OS though? Generating windows, mac and the other
binaries that CRAN provides sounds like it would be more involved, but
maybe I'm missing something.

On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <
[email protected]> wrote:

@cboettig https://github.com/cboettig That is still the same. You just
run a script over either source or prebuild binaries -- there is a
function in either base R's tools or utils that does it -- and then serve
the resulting PACKAGE{.gz}. Been there, done that (in-house that is).

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#79 (comment).

Carl Boettiger
UC Santa Cruz
http://carlboettiger.info/

[eddelbuettel]

Step back for a second.

There are sources. There are OSs.

Each of possibly multiple OSs writes its binary packages (if it has any) into the proper directory structure -- mapping exactly what CRAN has in terms of a file structure.

You then do one call (in any OSs) to summarize these files and versions in PACKAGES{,.gz}. No more, no less.

Lastly, that PACKAGES{,.gz}, as well as the files it describes, is served over http on port 80.

And yes, you can separate all those concerns: the binary building, the index creation, the serving. But to build, say, Windoze binaries you still need a Windoze builder (or a cross-compiler setup, but I digress...)

[cboettig]

@andrewcstewart Just for fun, a dockerized r-repo (e.g. Docker container running an apache server): https://github.com/cboettig/dockerfiles/tree/master/r-repo

Like Dirk points out though, such R repositories are simply a static file structure following certain conventions, so Docker isn't very relevant. For instance, rather than run your own apache server, one could just drop those binaries onto Github: https://github.com/yihui/xran (not suggesting that's a good idea or not, but illustrates the point)