[Rd] Sweave.sh shell script on CRAN

[Gregor Gorjanc]

Duncan Murdoch wrote:
...
>> Maybe I got this totally wrong. Say someone who uses Windows finds R and
>> installs it via setup file. Can he/she launch the folowing without
>> having Perl and/or sh.exe?
>>
>> R CMD script whateverOption
> 
> No.  Installing a binary package has a pure R implementation so it
> doesn't need R CMD, but most of the capabilities of R CMD are not
> available with a basic R install.
> 
> There are two reasons for this.  One is that the extra tools that are
> needed take up a lot of space, so they would make the setup file really
> huge.  That's an issue of less importance these days than in the past.
> 
> Another issue that is still important is that not all the tools needed
> have licenses compatible with redistribution:  in particular ActiveState
> Perl and the Microsoft Help Workshop.  There are other Perl
> implementations, but in the past Brian Ripley found that they didn't
> work.  I don't know if that's still true.  (In fact, I don't know if the
> licenses still limit redistribution.)


OK. Thank you for this explanation. I can not live without unix shell
and therefore never noticed that under Windows say R CMD INSTALL or
other R CMD scripts do not work without sh.exe (and/or Perl).

Gregor