[Rd] R-Forge SVN repositories: R CMD build/check error on Windows machines

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Stefan Theussl wrote:

> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 28/04/2008 12:22 PM, Stefan Theussl wrote:
>>> Dear R-devel,
>>> 
>>> One of our R-Forge developers pointed out that it is not possible to build 
>>> packages under Windows using the R-Forge repository structure: a package 
>>> resides in ./pkg - not in a directory with the same name as the package 
>>> name.
>>> 
>>> Under Linux 'R CMD build pkg' or 'R CMD check pkg' work pretty well (I 
>>> think Kurt Hornik fixed that in R 2.5.1 or so) whereas under Windows one 
>>> gets the following error (this is the example sent by the user):

[...]

> Nevertheless, I think that this is a useful convenience feature (indeed I use 
> that very often under Linux). E.g., one wants to have his or her packages in 
> different directories like foo-devel, foo-release and just say R CMD 
> build/check on them.

(I think the problem with 'build' on Windows comes from packages with 
vignettes.)

Features such as this have a little cost (not least in maintenance when 
developers don't know about them).  However, the plan is to move INSTALL 
to an R script used by both Unix and Windows for 2.8.0 which would allow 
more flexibility and keep the platforms in line.  Knowing this is required 
at the design stage is much easier than bolting it on afterwards.  (One 
consequence is that I am not at all keen to change the Windows INSTALL for 
2.7.x.)

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595