[Rd] .Rbuildignore {was: ... upgrading an R (WINDOWS) installation ..}
Uwe Ligges
ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de
Wed Jul 6 23:31:25 CEST 2005
Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> On 7/6/05, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
>
>>Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 7/6/05, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>>>>"Gabor" == Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> on Wed, 6 Jul 2005 08:24:49 -0400 writes:
>>>>
>>>>.......................
>>>>.......................
>>>>
>>>> Gabor> I have cleaned up my batch files (somewhat) and posted them to
>>>> Gabor> CRAN. See my recent post:
>>>> Gabor> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-July/073400.html
>>>>
>>>> Gabor> If any of this functionality could migrate to R
>>>> Gabor> itself that would be great.
>>>>
>>>> ........
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Gabor> 2. Also if Rcmd CHECK and Rcmd INSTALL were to
>>>> Gabor> process .Rbuildignore like Rcmd BUILD does then
>>>> Gabor> makepkg.bat would not have to do a build first.
>>>>
>>>>No! {We have been here before, and I had explained before that}
>>>>this is really undesired: ".Rbuildignore" should contain what is
>>>>ignored by build, but not by "check".
>>>>It does make sense to have extra code and / or checks for 'R CMD check'
>>>>that I as package developer want to run, but that are
>>>>-- too time consuming
>>>>-- too platform specific
>>>>-- ......
>>>>to be run during the daily checks on CRAN (e.g.) /
>>>>to be run by others at all.
>>>>
>>>>{And BTW, AFAIK, 'Rcmd' is now `somewhat deprecated' in favor
>>>>of "R CMD" since the latter is portable }
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Martin
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I think its too heavy handed an approach. This should be up to the package
>>>developer via a switch. I like to put partially written code and other things
>>>not intended for distribution in .Rbuildignore and don't want them checked or
>>>installed until I move them out of .Rbuildignore. That makes it
>>>possible to keep
>>>everything together. Without this one must 1. keep them elsewhere
>>>(which I am considering as an alternate approach to what I do now although
>>>it would be a shame) or else 2. write batch files (which I have
>>>written for XP) to do
>>>a prebuild every time one does a check or install.
>>>
>>>One annoying aspect of R CMD is the requirement for capitalization. Maybe
>>>that's ok on UNIX but on Windows one is used to using upper and lower
>>>case interchangeably. Its also annoying to have to write two words instead of
>>>one for a frequently issued command. At any rate I always call it through
>>
>>Gabor, honestly, this is nonsense.
>>
>>1. Do you expect that R also changes under Windows because you are used
>>to mix upper and lower case and want to say SUMMARY() or rowsums()?
>>2. Do you really thing it is annoying to type "R CMD" rather than
>>"Rcmd"? Hmm, anybody else has a space bar left for Gabor?
>>
>>Best,
>>Uwe
>>
>>
>>>my Rcmd.bat batch file so its not really an issue for me.
>
>
> It was claimed its portable and that is true in the strictest sense that it
> works on both UNIX and Windows but it would be even more
> desirable if it were not just portable but also worked the way the target
> system worked rather than just acting like a UNIX utility does
> on Windows. Ideally it would work as other Windows utilities work,
> e.g. note that we run the following using upper and lower case and
> get the same result:
>
> C:> net use ?
> The syntax of this command is:
> NET USE
> [devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
> ...
>
> C:> NET USE ?
> The syntax of this command is:
> NET USE
> [devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
> ...
No! That something completely different: If Windows allows to use "net
use" and "NET USE" even if only the latter is the documeted way, OK.
These are, as you mentioned yourself, *Windows utilities* and you don't
want to port this syntax.
But if you type "R cmd", it is no longer portable, and "Rcmd" for sure
is not. "R CMD" is an R utility --- and R behaves case senstive.
Uwe Ligges
> A Windows user does not expect the case sensitive behaviour
> since just about all the software one uses does not work that way.
> I got tripped up by it myself and obviously others do too. e.g. see
> this recent post:
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-June/073154.html
>
> I was just pointing out this undesirable aspect. It may be a small point
> but the sum of small inconsistencies can collectively amount to substantial
> difficulty and contribute to the feeling that software is hard to use.
>
> On the other point, I may be spacebar-challenged but Rcmd does address
> these points.
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