[Rd] R CMD check: Sys.getenv("R_GSCMD") cannot contain full pathname (contrary to docs)

[Henrik Bengtsson]

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 3:45 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> This is simply not true.  Sys.which() should accept absolute paths, and does
> on my systems (even my Windows system).  However, it looks like you gave an
> unescaped path containing spaces.  Most likely you need to include that path
> in double quotes (just as you would on a Windows shell).

The observered behavior now makes sense.  I saw from the SVN log that
you've already clarified this in several places of the docs.

Thanks for this.

/HB

>
>
> On Wed, 30 May 2012, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>
>> Bump, in case it was missed.  This is also the case with R Under
>> development (unstable) (2012-05-25 r59443).  /Henrik
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> in help("R_GSCMD") it says "R_GSCMD: Optional. The path to
>>> Ghostscript, used by dev2bitmap, bitmap and embedFonts. Consulted when
>>> those functions are invoked.".  However, if 'R_GSCMD' contains a full
>>> pathname to the Ghostscript executable (as above "path" indicates),
>>> e.g.
>>>
>>>> Sys.getenv("R_GSCMD")
>>>
>>> [1] "C:\\Program Files\\gs\\gs8.71\\bin\\gswin32c.exe"
>>>
>>> then 'R CMD check' will report
>>>
>>> * checking sizes of PDF files under 'inst/doc' ... NOTE
>>> Unable to find GhostScript executable to run checks on size reduction
>>>
>>> Setting 'R_GSCMD' to "gswin32c.exe" and asserting that it is the PATH
>>> (this is on Windows), it works.
>>>
>>>
>>> TROUBLESHOOTING:
>>> In the local function check_doc_size() of tools:::.check_packages()
>>> [cf. http://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/src/library/tools/R/check.R],
>>> the Ghostscript executable is retrieved as:
>>>
>>>  gs_cmd <- find_gs_cmd(Sys.getenv("R_GSCMD", ""))
>>>
>>> and if nzchar(gs_cmd) is FALSE, then the 'R CMD check' NOTE appears.
>>> Inspecting tools:::find_gs_cmd, this corresponds to
>>>
>>>  gs_cmd <- Sys.which(Sys.getenv("R_GSCMD", ""))
>>>
>>> iff 'R_GSCMD' is set.  In other words, tools:::find_gs_cmd() assumes a
>>> basename not a full pathname.
>>>
>>>
>>> SUGGESTIONS:
>>> Update tools:::find_gs_cmd() to test for file existence before turning
>>> to Sys.which(), e.g.
>>>
>>> find_gs_cmd <- function (gs_cmd)
>>> {
>>>    if (!nzchar(gs_cmd)) {
>>>        if (.Platform$OS.type == "windows") {
>>>            gs_cmd <- Sys.which("gswin64c")
>>>            if (!nzchar(gs_cmd))
>>>                gs_cmd <- Sys.which("gswin32c")
>>>            gs_cmd
>>>        }
>>>        else Sys.which("gs")
>>>    } else {
>>>      if (file.exists(gs_cmd) && !file.info(gs_cmd)$isdir)
>>>        gs_cmd
>>>      else
>>>        Sys.which(gs_cmd)
>>>   }
>>> }
>>>
>>>
>>> /Henrik
>>>
>>>> sessionInfo()
>>>
>>> R version 2.15.0 Patched (2012-04-08 r58935)
>>> Platform: x86_64-pc-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
>>>
>>> locale:
>>> [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252
>>> [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.1252
>>> [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.1252
>>> [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
>>> [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>>>
>>> attached base packages:
>>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>>
>>> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
>>> [1] R.methodsS3_1.4.0 tools_2.15.0
>>
>>
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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