[Rd] Error in R CMD INSTALL on Windows XP using Rtools28

[Gabor Grothendieck]

You could leave your path at:

%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;c:\Programme\Microsoft
SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\

and then use Rcmd.bat or rtools.bat to add the rest.

Also there are still two problems:

1. one of the dangers of your setup is that
Rtools has a conflict with Windows since it
has its own find which takes over from Windows' find
and can cause Windows batch files not related to R to fail.
As a result its not a good idea to permanently set your
path to include the rtools but better to do it session
by session so that non-R sessions are unaffected.

2. Also you still don't seem to have MiKTeX on your path
so I don't think its correct yet.  Rcmd.bat or rtools.bat
would add the path to MiKTeX too (if you have it in a
standard location).

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 9:41 AM, cstrato <cstrato at aon.at> wrote:
> Dear Duncan, dear Gabor,
>
> Thank you for this additional information and all these great tips.
>
> Setting the system path in the following way solved my problem:
> c:\Rtools\bin;c:\Rtools\perl\bin;c:\Rtools\MinGW\bin;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;c:\Programme\Microsoft
> SQL Server\90\Tools\binn\
>
> Luckily this solves also the problem with potential conflicts between R
> tools, Microsoft tools and ROOT, so that I do not have to rename any tools
> (which I would be reluctant to do).
>
> Since at the moment everything seems to work fine, and I am no Windows
> expert (I do all my development on my Mac), I will keep the current setting,
> however, the next time I have to set up everything, I will try to take
> advantage of Rcmd.bat since Gabor mentions that it will not override any of
> my settings.
>
> Regarding the R installation documentation, I understand now that this seems
> to be a problem of my complicated setup and not a general problem, so adding
> this information may confuse other people.
>
> Best regards
> Christian
>
>
> Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 8:08 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> cstrato wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 5 Dec 2008, cstrato wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear Duncan
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thank you for this explicit explanation, you are right:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When setting the system variable "Path" (as administrator) in addition
>>>>>> to setting the user variable "PATH" (as user), now everything works
>>>>>> fine.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Interestingly, setting the system variable "Path" on my laptop with
>>>>>> Rtools27 seems not to be necessary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> May I suggest that  this could be clarified in "R Installation and
>>>>>> Administration" since there only the user variable "PATH" is mentioned
>>>>>> (as
>>>>>> far as I see).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In a shell there is only one PATH, so the manual is correct.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I did not say that the manual is not correct, I only suggested to
>>>> clarify
>>>> the issue, since when running R CMD INSTALL from the Command Console I
>>>> need
>>>> to set also the system variable "Path".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'd be reluctant to do this, for the same reason Brian was:  the
>>> documentation is correct.  You need to set the PATH environment variable
>>> correctly, and that's what we say.  The fact that doing this is
>>> complicated
>>> and confusing on Windows is a problem with the Windows design and
>>> documentation, not the R documentation, and Microsoft certainly has more
>>> resources than we do to address it.  What was their response when you
>>> asked
>>> them to improve their documentation?
>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The http://batchfiles.googlecode.com home page does give some tips for
>> setting
>> paths just in case.  Of course if you are using the batchfiles you
>> won't have to set
>> any paths in the first place.
>>
>>
>>
>
>