[Rd] make.packages.html

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:00 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
<ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 May 2008, Jonathan Baron wrote:
>
>> It used to be that, whenever I added or updated a new package, the
>> file /usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages.html would be updated (on Linux).
>> Now I find that this does not happen anymore.
>
> It does happen, but only if you install a package to the .Library directory.
>  That file is only intended as a listing of the main library, not other
> libraries (as which are in the library path is session-specific).  As NEWS
> for R 2.6.0 says
>
>    o   install.packages() on a Unix-alike now updates
>        doc/html/packages.html only if packages are installed to
>        .Library (by that exact name).
>
>> So I found this function make.packages.html, which seems to do what I
>> think should be done automatically.  But it puts its output in a file in
>> /tmp/...,
>
> It is a helper for help.start(), which sets up details of the current
> packages in the session temporary directory.  Please do consult its help
> file.
>
> The function used to update doc/html/packages.html is
> utils:::link.html.help(), which is a wrapper for tools:::unix.packages.html.
>
>> which I then have to move, in an extra step, to where it should be.  I
>> don't understand why this happens.  I think that the old behavior was
>> better.
>
> It caused a lot of needless updating.
>
>> I have two reasons for this.  First, my R page (finzi.psych.upenn.edu)
>> has a list of all packages.  As it happens, since this change has
>> occurred, it has been out of date, until today.  Second, for my own
>> use, I have a Firefox bookmark to
>> file:/usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages.html, which was also out of date.
>
> Let's hope you have a vaiid file:// URL ....
>
>> I don't subscribe to r-devel, so, in case this gets posted, please use
>> group reply.
>
> What we don't know is where you are installing your packages.  If it is to
> the main library, the behaviour should be unchanged (and I have just tested
> it and it works for me).  If it is to another library, the intention never
> was to list packages in other libraries.
>
> [Note that all this applies to Unix-alikes: Windows does not have symbolic
> links (OK, some filesystems on some versions have a very limited form) and R
> does things differently there.]

Perhaps this is what you are referring to but just in case note that
subject to permissions one can create UNIX-like symbolic links
on Vista:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link#Windows_Vista_symbolic_link