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

[Lars-Dominik Braun <ldb@leibniz-psychology.org>]

Hi Ricardo,

> 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.

Cheers,
Lars