[bug#38576] [PATCH] gnu: r-irkernel: Fix R kernel loading

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Lars-Dominik Braun <address@hidden> skribis:

>> This part looks fine to me, though I wonder if that’s what users of this
>> package would expect.  Is there an expectation that the effective R is
>> defined by the environment?  Or would that not work anyway?
> it’s what python-ipykernel does – without explanation though. I’m not an R
> expert, so I’m unsure whether any R installation from the environment (which
> could be user-installed in $HOME) would be able to load this plugin or just 
> the
> one it was “built” for. This change assumes the latter.
>
>> 
>> > @@ -12423,6 +12429,8 @@ running IRkernel session.")
>> >         ("r-evaluate" ,r-evaluate)
>> >         ("r-irdisplay" ,r-irdisplay)
>> >         ("r-jsonlite" ,r-jsonlite)
>> > +       ;; sets R_LIBS_SITE, so R can actually find this package (IRkernel)
>> > +       ("r-minimal" ,r-minimal)
>> >         ("r-pbdzmq" ,r-pbdzmq)
>> >         ("r-repr" ,r-repr)
>> >         ("r-uuid" ,r-uuid)))
>> 
>> This doesn’t look right to me.  It seems wrong for any R package to
>> propagate R itself.  The R_LIBS_SITE variable is “attached” to
>> “r-minimal”, so when that is installed R will find the r-irkernel
>> package.  Am I missing something?
> If r-minimal is not installed, the kernel will simply not work and thus
> render this package useless. That’s why I would consider it a dependency.

An argument in favor of the status quo would be that it allows users to
choose between ‘r’ and ‘r-minimal’.  Is that a compelling argument?

It may be more important for ‘r-irkernel’ to work out of the box, like
you did.

However, if we go that route, we should arrange to not propagate
‘r-minimal’ (it’s intrusive) and instead have ‘kernel.json’ do the right
thing.

How does that sound?

Thanks,
Ludo’.