I've spent a bit of time building on Charles Blundell and Dirk Eddelbuettel's cran2deb work to build most of CRAN, Bioconductor, and omegahat for Debian. Currently, only amd64 on unstable is built, but I plan to build amd64 and i386 on stable too.

Using the R Package Archive

Add an appropriate line to your /etc/apt/sources.list like the following:

deb http://debian-r.debian.net/debian-r/ unstable main

Get the signing key and check it:

gpg --recv-keys AE05705B842492A68F75D64E01BF7284B26DD379;
gpg --check-sigs AE05705B842492A68F75D64E01BF7284B26DD379;

Verify that it is at least signed by Don Armstrong twice (808D0FD0 and D98C0FBA). The D98C0FBA key is in the Debian Developer keyring, and both are in the strong set. Then actually add the key:

gpg --export AE05705B842492A68F75D64E01BF7284B26DD379 \
 |sudo apt-key add -;

Then you can apt-get update; apt-get install to your heart's content.

Mirroring debian-r.debian.net

If you wish to mirror debian-r.debian.net, please use the standard Debian mirror scripts explained here: using rsync://debian-r.debian.net/debian-r/.

Additional Information

These packages have been built in a fairly automated fashion, and not tested in any significant way. They are currently versioned using a ~debianr suffix, which should help to avoid trouncing on existing official Debian packages (which are of much higher quality.)

There are also some packages which have not yet built due to various bugs; I plan on trying to get to them as I am able. If there is a package which you do not see in the archive, but need (and which has a DFSG free license), please e-mail me and I will prioritize getting it working.

If you have additional questions, please contact Don Armstrong.