[Rd] Possible bug in 2.11.x texmf makefile.in and some related things...

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 4 Jul 2010, Marc Schwartz wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> A list of some possible issues:
>
> 1. In R 2.11.x, in:
>
>  http://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-2-11-branch/share/texmf/
>
> there are two files, jss.cls and jss.bst (for JSS), which appear to 
> be new since 2.10.x. These files are not installed when 
> building/installing R. It would appear that they are not included 
> in:
>
>  https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-2-11-branch/share/Makefile.in
>
> The relevant code there is:
>
>  	@for f in $(srcdir)/texmf/*.sty \
> 		  $(srcdir)/texmf/*.fd; do \
> 	  $(INSTALL_DATA) $${f} "$(DESTDIR)$(rsharedir)/texmf"; \
> 	done
>
> which would skip over the two jss files.
>
> This issue came up when another useR (on F12) was building the zoo 
> package with its vignette, which apparently uses jss.cls. Errors 
> were of course observed. I thought that the error was limited to 
> Fedora, but this is an issue in the source.

But there are a fair number of packages which need extra LaTeX files 
to build their vignettes, and e.g. the CRAN test systems have had to 
have these installed for a long time.  Certainly zoo has needed them 
from before 2.11.0, and many believe that a Open Source package needs 
to include copies of such files (see 'Writing R Extensions').

> 2. On a related issue, the texmf tree appears to be modified in 
> 2.12.x, with the latex and bibtex files being put into separate 
> folders:

More precisely, it is a TDS-comformant tree now.

>  https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/texmf/
>
> The makefile.in:
>
>  https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/share/Makefile.in
>
> appears to be modified to handle that split:
>
>  	@for f in $(srcdir)/texmf/bibtex/bst/*; do \
> 	  $(INSTALL_DATA) $${f} "$(DESTDIR)$(rsharedir)/texmf/bibtex/bst"; \
> 	done
> 	@for f in $(srcdir)/texmf/tex/latex/*; do \
> 	  $(INSTALL_DATA) $${f} "$(DESTDIR)$(rsharedir)/texmf/tex/latex"; \
> 	done
>
>
> So there was perhaps an oversight of sorts for 2.11.x in handling 
> these two JSS related files.

That's a different hand.  I don't know if the files were intended to 
be installed in 2.11.x: they are in R-devel so eventually packages 
depending on R >= 2.12.0 will be able to rely on them.

> 3. A final note, which is that the NEWS file appears to be missing 
> from R-Devel tonight:
>
>  https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/
>
> I was trying to read it to note any comments relevant to the above.

Correct.  You need to look in 
https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/NEWS.Rd
which says

       \item File \file{NEWS} is now generated at installation with a
       slightly different format: it will be in UTF-8 on platforms using
       UTF-8, and otherwise in ASCII.

       \item \file{NEWS} is no longer in the sources, but generated as
       part of the installation.  The primary source for changes is now
       \file{doc/NEWS.Rd}.

A version of the NEWS file will be in the tarballs.

>
> HTH,
>
> Marc Schwartz
>
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>

-- 
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