To install: $ cd .. $ R CMD INSTALL cran2deb copy cran2deb/exec/cran2deb into somewhere in your executable path (e.g., /usr/local/bin, $home/bin) To configure: 1. You need a web server serving from say, /var/www/cran2deb/ Let ROOT be the value returned by running: cran2deb root Let SYS be the system you wish to build for (e.g., debian-amd64) 2. create /etc/cran2deb a. copy ROOT/etc/* into /etc/cran2deb/ b. ensure ROOT/etc/sys/SYS is set up c. /etc/cran2deb/archive should be a symlink pointing to /var/www/cran2deb/ $ ln -s /var/www/cran2deb/ /etc/cran2deb/archive $ mkdir /var/www/cran2deb/SYS d. modify OTHERMIRROR of /etc/cran2deb/sys/SYS/pbuilderrc.in to point to your webserver e. run: cran2deb repopulate 3. cran2deb needs a persistent cache outside of R's control. therefore, create /var/cache/cran2deb, writable by whichever user(s) will run cran2deb. 4. add to /etc/rc.local: # one mini-dinstall daemon for each apt repo for sys in debian-i386 debian-amd64 do mini-dinstall -c /etc/cran2deb/sys/$sys/mini-dinstall.conf done and execute. 5. run: cran2deb update 6. Try building a simple package: cran2deb build zoo (The result will be in /var/cache/cran2deb/results/SYS) $ cran2deb help will display a short summary of help for each cran2deb command. Concerning data/: This contains scripts necessary to recreate the database should you loose the database. It's a backup that can be versioned by SVN. There is a script called pull that, when run from the data directory will recreate all the files from the database EXCEPT for the licenses. The licenses cannot be recreated because licenses can be based on one-way hashes. This process could certainly be improved.