[Rd] rm: failed to get attributes of `/':

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 1/14/2008 6:25 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> Recently I have heard reports like the one below a couple of times:
> 
> Tineke Casneuf wrote:
>> However I did encouter an error when trying to install a self-made dummy
>> package. I am sure it is not due to the package because it can be build on
>> someone else's windows PC.
>>
>> The error message is *rm: failed to get attributes of `/': No such file or
>> directory.
> Today I saw one live, and managed to track down the problem.  Cygwin 
> (from which the Windows R toolset gets a number of utilities), stores 
> information on its mounts in the Windows registry.  If you later 
> uninstall it but leave the registry entries in place, you'll get an 
> error like the above.  The rm utility thinks that "/" refers to a 
> directory like c:\cygwin, but such a directory doesn't exist.
> 
> I don't know if this is a bug in the Cygwin uninstaller (which I would 
> say should remove registry entries once they are no longer valid), in rm 
> (which should ignore mounts that don't make sense), or if it is user 
> error.  But the fix is quite simple:  look in the registry (under 
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cygnus Solutions\Cygwin\mounts v2, or the 
> same location in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE), and remove any invalid mounts.
> 
> I will modify the Rtools installer to work around this problem.

This is now in place. I also added the ability to manually edit the 
PATH, in case you don't like the automatic edits.

Hopefully I didn't introduce any new bugs at the same time.

Duncan Murdoch