[Rd] Installation problem from R 2.8.x

[zong-pei.han at imm.ox.ac.uk]

Dear Developers,

Since 2.8, R installation has got a bug in it such
that if a package has a "configure" file then it
cannot be installed without modification.

For example:

* Installing *source* package 'foreign' ...
ERROR: 'configure' exists but is not executable --
see the 'R Installation and Adminstration Manual'
* Removing '/usr/local/source_code/Linux/R/R-2.9.2/library/foreign'
make[2]: *** [foreign.ts] Error 1

In fact, 'configure' is executable!!! So I have to manually
run 'configure', remove 'configure', and then repackage
foreign_0.8-37.tar.gz so it can be installed.

This bug makes it very time consuming to add any package
which has a 'configure' in it. And the bug seems to be
in  src/library/tools/R/install.R

Regards,

Dr Zong-Pei Han
UNIX Systems Administrator
Computational Biology Research Group
University of Oxford
http://www.cbrg.ox.ac.uk/