[ESS] Version currently available in ELPA?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 6 February 2013 at 11:08, Chris Evans wrote:
| This is very helpful: thanks Martin.

Also, at least for the Ubuntu repo available via CRAN, you get the new ESS
versions as a .deb within a day or two as Michael usually rebuilds what I put
into Debian.  I use those myself on a number of machines.

If the Debian repo on CRAN doesn't, maybe you can bug Johannes about it. Or
just pick the package manually -- it is just .el code so no binary
incompatibility can arise. Or just use SVN as you did.

Dirk

 
| ----- Original Message -----
| > From: "Martin Maechler" <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch>
| > To: "Chris Evans" <chrishold at psyctc.org>
| > Cc: ess-help at r-project.org, "dirk eddelbuettel" <dirk.eddelbuettel at r-project.org>
| > Sent: Wednesday, 6 February, 2013 9:56:02 AM
| > Subject: Re: [ESS] Version currently available in ELPA?
| > 
| > >>>>> Chris Evans <chrishold at psyctc.org>
| > >>>>>     on Tue, 5 Feb 2013 19:02:59 +0000 writes:
| > 
| >     > Interestingly M-x ess-version gets me: "[No match]"
| >     > (immediately after the "ess-version" in the minibuffer)
| >     > I'm using stock Emacs on Debian squeeze
| >     > ("23.2+1.7+squeeze" according to Synaptic) and also the
| >     > stock ESS (says "5.11-1")
| > 
| >     > Am I way behind the cutting edge with ESS then?
| >     > I suspect I am.
| > 
| > Indeed, you definitely are. I don't know the current names of the
| >    (stable, testing, unstable, experimental)
| > {is the terminology above correct ?} versions of Debian.
| 
| Just the first three.
| 
| > But I think you cannot reasonably stay with 'stable' if you want to be anywhere close to 'cutting edge'.
| 
| Yes.  It's a feature (or fault if you don't like it) of Debian that it only makes security changes to "stable" after it's released so projects that are changing rapidly get to be way behind the latest versions.
|  
| > What I think you *can* do however {but I no longer recall how exactly} is to decide to use some (small! preferrably) parts of say
| > Debian unstable, but for the rest stay with Debian stable. .. and then do that exactly with ESS ..
| 
| That sounds like using the backports repository.  To quote from:
|   http://backports-master.debian.org/
| "Backports are recompiled packages from testing (mostly) and unstable (in a few cases only, e.g. security updates) in a stable environment so that they will run without new libraries (whenever it is possible) on a Debian stable distribution
| 
| Backports cannot be tested as extensively as Debian stable, and backports are provided on an as-is basis, with risk of incompatibilities with other components in Debian stable. Use with care!
| 
| It is therefore recommended to select single backported packages that fit your needs, and not use all available backports."
| 
| I don't know what's involved in maintaining the ESS package in backports.  ESS only depends on dpkg (for packaging) and Emacs so I suspect it isn't very difficult but Dirk will know and I know that many people put huge amounts of unpaid time into ESS as it is so I'm not pushing for this if it's any significant work load.  If someone could point me to the information, I could see if I could take that up.
| 
| I've got 5-11.1 in Squeeze with the backports in my repositories, Vincent Goulet's incredibly helpful package of goodies for Windoze gives me 12-09.2 rev. 5395.  I see that Wheezy (Debian testing) is quite a bit behind that on 12.04-4-1 and Sid (Debian unstable) has 12.09-2-1 which makes good sense and is reassuring: it should be pretty near the cutting/bleeding edge of ESS.
| 
| > Thanks to Dirk Eddelbuettel (CC'ed now, so he can correct all my fuzzy/inaccurate statements :-), a new release of ESS is almost
| > immediately "merged into" to Debian, however, typically 'unstable' only, IIRC.
| > 
| >     > What is the easiest way for me to stay nearer the
| >     > edge if not right on the github (or whatever) bleeding
| >     > edge ... or is that a safe place to be?
| > 
| > It's a matter of taste if you use svn (my preference) or github here.  But really I'd think that's often too bleeding edge to
| > recommend for regular use.
| 
| Aha.  OK. SVN was easy to install and has pulled down a copy of the latest ESS.
| 
| Section 1.4.1 of the ESS manual says:
| 
| "If you remove other versions of ESS from your emacs load-path, you can then use the development version by adding the following to .emacs:
|      (load "/path/to/ess-svn/lisp/ess-site.el")"
| 
| I was hoping that could quite easily (quick mv !?) do that "remove other versions" so I could run the latest version from subversion but could very easily comment out that line in my .emacs and go back to the main version from stable (preferably not) or a more recent version if I ever hit something that looked like a bug or problem in ESS.  I think I could fairly easily have copies of 5-11.1 (from stable), and 12.04-4-1 (from testing) as well as the latest subversion version.  That way I'd add to the tester pool I guess.
| 
| So a few final questions:
| 1) How do I "remove other versions of ESS from your emacs load-path"?
| 2) Am I right (to Dirk?) in guessing that I could quite easily do that, saving it as ess-5-11.1 for example, then pull the deb package down from testing and use raw "dpkg -i" to install that and then mv that to get a copy of 12.04-4-1 and finally 
| 3) I assume I can use a chron entry to pull the latest from subversion daily, anyone remind me of the chrontab line?
| 
| I think that would mean, using the "(load "/path/to") fix above, that I'd run the latest subversion by default but with a quick comment of that line in .emacs and use of "cp -a" I could regress back to 12.04-4-1 or even 5-11.1 any time I needed to.
|  
| >     > TIA and thanks to all who make ESS so good and contribute
| >     > so generously and politely here: wonderful list.
| > 
| > :-)
| 
| Smiles all round and point about how good this list is beautifully demonstrated.  Thanks again,
| 
| Chris
| 

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com