[Rd] linking to package directories broken in R >= 2.10 beta

[Duncan Murdoch]

Thomas Petzoldt wrote:
> Dear R developers,
>
> some of our packages come with additional programming examples in a 
> directory called "/examples" which is created from "/inst/examples".
>
> This directory is linked from the docs (e.g. in inst/doc/index.html):
>
> <dl>
> <dt><a href="../examples/">examples</a>:
> <dd>Source code of examples
> </dl>
>
> Given, that we have a package "foo" this is resolved to:
>
> file:///C:/Programme/R/R-2.9.2/library/foo/examples/
>
> with R <= 2.9.2. With R 2.10 beta (R-beta_2009-10-16_r50118.tar.gz) and 
> R-devel (svn rev. 50118) we get:
>
> http://127.0.0.1:26383/library/foo/examples/
>
> This is fine, but in contrast to older versions (<= 2.9.2) no automatic 
> index is created for the linked directory, so we now get:
>
> "URL /library/foo/examples/ was not found"
>
> bu linking to *individual files* (e.g. examples/example.R) works as 
> expected. We can, of course, add manually maintained index files but I 
> would much prefer if a default index would be created for the directory 
> if no index.html is found.
>   

By "index" in R <= 2.9.2, you mean the default directory listing 
produced by the web server, rather than something produced by R, right?  
The R server does that now if the directory is named "doc", but not for 
an arbitrary path.  We are concerned about security:  any user on your 
system who can guess your port number can access your help system, so we 
want to be sure that such users can't access private files.

Duncan Murdoch
> I very much enjoy the new help system and would be even more happy if 
> that issue could be fixed.
>
> Thomas Petzoldt
>
>
> PS: A minimal reproducible example (foo_1.0.tar.gz) can be provided by 
> mail if required.
>
>