[Rd] Building Packages on Windows using .Rbuildignore (PR#7379)

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 19:32:25 +0100, Martin Maechler
<maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:

>>>>>> "Duncan" == Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
>>>>>>     on Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:36:03 +0100 (CET) writes:
>
>    Duncan> On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:38:47 +0000 (UTC), Gabor
>    Duncan> Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at myway.com> wrote :
>
>    >> DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING .RBUILDIGNORE AND NOT
>    >> 
>    >> The reason that the processing is different according to
>    >> whether one uses .Rbuildignore or not is that R CMD build
>    >> takes the .Rbuildignore file into account but R CMD
>    >> install R CMD check R CMD build --binary do not take
>    >> .Rbuildignore into account.
>
>    Duncan> Okay, now I understand.  I think I'd call the last
>    Duncan> of those a bug, and it would seem to me that the
>    Duncan> install and check scripts should also respect this
>    Duncan> directive.  I've now copied this to the r-bugs list.
>
>    Duncan> (This was reported for Windows; I don't know if it
>    Duncan> applies to other platforms as well.)
>
>Yes it does (*), but I think it is NOT a bug but a feature,
>at least for "check" and "install" (*) 
>and very much desired in some cases :
>
>For instance, the package developer may want more
>regression tests in <Pkg>/tests/ :
>
>1) Have extra *.Rout.save files that are architecture
>   dependent and hence not for general distribution of the
>   package, but important for the package developer in order to
>   assure that functionality doesn't change when the package is
>   extended, reorganized, ....
>
>2) Have more  tests/*.R  files  that take a long time to run.
>   Time that the package developer wants to spend, but doesn't
>   dare to put on the daily CRAN or Bioconductor test suites.
>
>3) similarly for vignettes
>
>4) similar issues for experimental  R/*.R files  or man/*.Rd
>   files for these.
>
>One I thing that would be quite useful and would even solve
>Gabor's problem: 
>The introduction of a new command line switch, say "--build-ignore",
>to the commands 'R CMD check' and 'R CMD install'

Shouldn't that option be "--ignore-build-ignore"? :-)

More seriously:  I suspect that an on/off switch for the .Rbuildignore
file wouldn't be sufficiently flexible: the same package author might
want different things at different times, e.g. building a binary for
Windows would include different files than a binary for another
platform.  We could put together some sort of system of conditionals
within the .Rbuildignore file, but I think it would be better to just
advise such package writers to maintain one or more .Rbuildignore.in
files, and manually (or by makefile) copy the appropriate one in place
first.

Duncan Murdoch

>
>--------
>
>(*) I do agree that  "R CMD build --binary" probably really should
>    follow the ".Rbuildignore" file ``directives'' if it doesn't
>    currently.