[Rd] possible help.start() bug

[M. Edward Borasky]

On Tue, 2004-10-05 at 16:27, Michele Alzetta wrote:
> I have compiled R 2.0.0 for my gentoo desktop and have found this problem:
> 
> help.start() will work correcly if mozilla is already started, will
> fail if mozilla is not.
> 
> Error message:
> 
> > help.start()
> Making links in per-session dir ...
> If /usr/bin/mozilla is already running, it is *not* restarted, and you
>     must switch to its window.
> Otherwise, be patient ...
> > No running windows found
> Error: No running window found.
> 
> Is this reproducible on other systems ?

I have Gentoo on an x86 and it does the same thing. Moreover, it's been
that way for 1.9.1 as well. It may be some permissions issue; when you
install the Gentoo R ebuild, you do so as "root", and for that matter,
you install packages to the library as "root" too. 

I haven't tried this on any other versions of Linux recently. My dim
memory from Dirk Eddelbuettel's Debian-based Quantian is that it works
fine there. Dirk, any comments? 

I'll take a look at the 1.9.1 install on my Gentoo systems and see if I
can figure out what's happening. I use Firefox rather than Mozilla as my
browser, and 

help.start(browser="firefox") 

exhibits the same behavior ... if it's running, it works, if it isn't,
it doesn't start.