[Rd] Building a custom Windows installer

[John Fox]

Dear Brian,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Prof Brian Ripley [mailto:ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk]
> Sent: July-14-10 3:15 AM
> To: John Fox
> Cc: r-devel at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Building a custom Windows installer
> 
> John,
> 
> It is not clear to me what you actually did (and I am also assuming
> this is 32-bit R), but I surmise that you did not build R in your
> source directory. 

Yes, that's right. It wasn't clear to me from the manual that it was
necessary to build R (or as it turns out, just MkRules) when using IMAGEDIR.
I guess that this has changed since I last built a custom installer, or my
notes were incomplete.

> One of the first steps in doing so is to make
> src/gnuwin32/MkRules. (You are also likely to need to customize the
> file, possibly via a MkRules.local, to set ISDIR.)

Not necessary in my case, since Inno Setup is in the default location.

> 
> I've done a quick check, and in R 2.11.x AFAICS all that is needed is
> 
> cd R_SOURCES/src/gnuwin32
> make MkRules
> cd installer
> make myR IMAGEDIR=e:/temp/R-2.11.1 MDISDI=1

Yes, this works fine for me as well.

Thank you very much.

John

> 
> However, in 2.12.0 you will need to make R completely in the sources,
> as R is used for scripting.
> 
> Brian
> 
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2010, John Fox wrote:
> 
> > Dear r-devel list members,
> >
> > It's been several years since I last built a custom Windows installer
for
> R,
> > and despite my notes and the instructions in Sections 3.1.7 and D.4 of
the
> R
> > Installation and Administration Manual, I've run into a problem,
receiving
> > the following error message:
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>make myR
IMAGEDIR=c:/temp/R-2.11.1
> > MDISDI=1
> > Makefile:3: ../MkRules: No such file or directory
> > make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> > make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> > make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> > make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> > make: *** No rule to make target `../MkRules'.  Stop.
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > My path looks like this:
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>set path
> > Path=c:\Rtools\bin;c:\Rtools\perl\bin;c:\Rtools\MinGW\bin;C:\Program
> > Files\Commo
> > n Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\GTK\bin;C:\Program
> > Files\Insightful\spl
> > us80\;C:\Program Files\ActiveState Komodo Edit
> > 4\;.;c:\R\R-2.11.1\bin;C:\progra~
> >
>
1\miktex~1.7\miktex\bin;c:\progra~1\htmlhe~1;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;
> > C:\W
> > indows\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio
> > Shared\DLLShared\;C:\Pr
> > ogram Files\GnuWin32\bin;C:\Program Files\CollabNet
Subversion;C:\Program
> > Files\
> > MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin;C:\Program Files\SAS\Shared
> > Files\Formats;C:\Program
> >
>
Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
> > Fil
> > es\Smart Projects\IsoBuster;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
> > 2.7\miktex\bin\;C:\Program F
> > iles\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
> > Shared\Windows
> > Live;C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH Secure
> > Shell;C:\Program Fi
> > les\Bibtex2html;C:\Graphviz2.20\bin
> > PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > The directory c:/temp/R-2.11.1 contains a complete customized
installation
> > of R, while C:\R\src\R-2.11.1 contains the unpacked R sources. This is
on a
> > Windows Vista system. I've updated Rtools to version 2.11.  I can supply
> > more information, but I'm not sure what's relevant.
> >
> > I don't think that I should have to place a MkRules file in the gnuwin32
> > directory, but I tried copying each the MkRules.dist and MkRules.rules
> files
> > there in turn to MkRules. Neither worked; I apparently got farther
copying
> > MkRules.rules to MkRules, but eventually got another error:
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>make myR
IMAGEDIR=c:/temp/R-2.11.1
> > MDISDI=1
> > echo "make.packages.html(.Library)" | c:/temp/R-2.11.1/bin/rterm
--vanilla
> > --sla
> > ve LC_COLLATE=C
> > Making packages.html ... done
> > adding MD5 checksums
> > perl JRins.pl R-2.11.1 c:/temp/R-2.11.1 1 1 0 R-core
> > "/iscc" R.iss > myR.log
> > /iscc: not found
> > make: *** [myR] Error 127
> >
> > ----------- snip -----------
> >
> > Any help would be appreciated.
> >
> > John
> >
> > --------------------------------
> > John Fox
> > Senator William McMaster
> >  Professor of Social Statistics
> > Department of Sociology
> > McMaster University
> > Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
> > web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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