[Rd] RFC: Add 'postinstall' hook to R CMD INSTALL ?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Brian,

Thanks for the follow-up.

On 6 June 2008 at 11:34, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
| Isn't this what Type: Frontend is for?  That gives you complete control 
| and would seem appropriate for both of your examples.

Interesting.  But the R Extensions manual says

   1.10.1 Frontend
   ---------------
   
   This is a rather general mechanism, designed for adding new front-ends
   such as the *gnomeGUI* package.  If a `configure' file is found in the
   top-level directory of the package it is executed, and then if a
   `Makefile' is found (often generated by `configure'), `make' is called.
   If `R CMD INSTALL --clean' is used `make clean' is called.  No other
   action is taken.

I am talking about the need for 'other action' such as 'make install', say.

Are you suggesting I shoehorn what I want done into the main 'make' target ?

| On Thu, 5 Jun 2008, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
| 
| >
| > I have been mulling over an idea I had meant to flesh out with a prototype
| > but haven't gotten around to.   So here it goes in the abstract without
| > working code:
| >
| >
| > What:  Extend 'R CMD INSTALL' to also work on sources that are not strictly
| >       CRAN packages
| >
| > Why:  'R CMD INSTALL' is very good and very successful for CRAN packages. It
| >      has solved most issues related to configure, make, ... etc by relying
| >      on pre-computed and stored values.
| >
| >      CRAN is also very good as a mirror network to distribute content that
| >      is easy to obtain by useRs.
| >
| >      So there are cases where I'd like to use CRAN / R CMD INSTALL to work
| >      on non-package code. Two case are
| >
| >        i)  littler which is easy to 'configure; make; make install' but
| >            would want to live in $PREFIX/bin -- and I need to copy it there
| >
| >        ii) RCpp which is a library / glue code making live easier for C++
| >  	    code to interface with R; also easy to configure but I'd then
| >  	    libRcpp.{so,a} to be in $PREFIX/bin -- and I need to copy it
| > 	    there
| 
| I hope not in 'bin' -- I am not sure if you mean $PREFIX/lib[64] or 
| $R_HOME/lib?

Yes, cut&paste error. $PREFIX/lib is of course what I had in mind.

Other cases that may profit from this are

           iii)  Some other 'content' such as CRANberries or the cran2deb
              efforts could use it to synchronise / update SQLite database
              files in agreed upon locations.

	   iv)  Web-based R add-ons could possibly use this mechanism to hook
	      into the web server.

Dirk
 
| > How:  Similar to 'cleanup' we could have a script 'postinstall' in the
| >      top-level directory, and if present, R would execute it.
| >
| >
| > As I'm the one with the itch, I'd be happy to work on code towards
| > implementing this -- but before I go overboard with it, I'd love to hear
| > comments, suggestions, questions, ...  It is worthwhile? Is it feasible?
| > What did I overlook?
| >
| > Thanks, Dirk
| >
| > -- 
| > Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.
| >
| > ______________________________________________
| > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
| > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
| >
| 
| -- 
| 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

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.