[ARROW-16639] [R] Improve package installation (on Fedora 36) with arrow system packages

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Component/s: R
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/31989
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Dewey Dunnington
• Created: 24/May/22 11:46
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 11:45

Description

Fedora 36 includes both a 'libarrow' and a 'libarrow-dataset' package under pkg-config names 'arrow' and 'arrow-dataset', respectively. When we do install.packages("arrow") on Fedora 36, the pkg-config for 'arrow' gets picked up first, and we get a minimal arrow install. Installing with NOT_CRAN=true ARROW_USE_PKG_CONFIG=false results in a full compiled installation because binaries are not available for fedora-36 (according to the install output).

Reported by Roger Bivand (while testing GDAL + Arrow support since Fedora 36 is the easiest place to do that due to system Arrow): https://github.com/paleolimbot/narrow/issues/7

Reproducble using the fedora:36 docker container:

# docker run --rm -it fedora:36
dnf install -y R libarrow-dataset-devel cmake
R -e 'install.packages("arrow", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")'
R -e 'arrow::arrow_info()$capabilities'