[Rd] Building packages on Windows fails

[Peter Kleiweg]

Prof Brian Ripley schreef op de 7e dag van de wijnmaand van het jaar 2005:

> On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Peter Kleiweg wrote:
> 
> > Duncan Murdoch schreef op de 6e dag van de wijnmaand van het jaar 2005:
> > 
> > > On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Peter Kleiweg wrote:
> > > 
> > > > What has changed in R for Windows from version 1.7.1 to 
> > > > 2.2.0 that won't allow me to build binary packages?
> > > 
> > > Many things have changed; I don't know which is causing 
> > > the failure you see. One change is that instructions are 
> > > now collected in the Installation and Administration 
> > > manual. Try following the setup instructions there and see 
> > > if it still fails.
> > 
> > I can't find anything on building packages for Windows in 
> > that manual.
> 
> Your problems was installing, so the section on `Installing 
> Packages' should help you.

Installing worked fine. Building a binary distribution (with 
compiled help files) is what didn't work.

This worked fine:

    Rcmd build iL04

But that just gave a gzip'ed tarfile, not a zip-file, and 
without the compiled helpfiles.

This didn't work:

    Rcmd build --force --binary iL04


> > I did find a solution to the problem. On a Linux install, 
> > each package has a file CONTENTS. These are missing from the 
> > Windows install. I copied those files from my Linux install 
> > to my Windows install, and then I could build my own 
> > package. So I guess, these CONTENTS files should be included 
> > in the Windows install.
> 
> And indeed they are, as the presence of 500+ packages on CRAN 
> for Windows will show you.

Well, I just ran the install program for Windows, with compiled 
html help, but without the ordinary html help files. In that 
case, no CONTENTS files get installed.
 
> The recommended way to build a binary package on Windows is
> 
> R CMD INSTALL --build

Yes, that works. Even without the CONTENTS files. And this is 
recommended in the manual "Creating R packages", another manual 
than Duncan Murdoch was referring to.

I was using a method that was recommended in earlier versions. 
Perhaps that method should just be disabled, with a 
message about the current method, instead of having it fail for 
obscure reasons.


-- 
Peter Kleiweg
http://www.let.rug.nl/~kleiweg/