[Rd] Rebuild package on R 3.0.0 without source code?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 18/04/2013 16:07, McGehee, Robert wrote:
> R-developers,
> I have a binary R package built using R 2.14.1 that I would like to run on R 3.0.0. Unfortunately, the original source code is unavailable, so I cannot rebuild the package as R 3.0.0 requires.
>
> Is there a straight forward way of converting the package (.rdb, .rdx and .rds files) in the binary package from a 2.14.1 version to a 3.0.0 version without the source code (perhaps uncompressing/recompressing somehow)?
>
> Naturally, since the R code is visible, I know I can output all of the parsed objects in the package to a text file to make a skeleton package that can then be built/installed. Something like this:
>
>         objs <- ls(envir=loadNamespace("binaryPkg"), all.names=TRUE)
>         dump(objs, file="code.R", envir=loadNamespace("binaryPkg"))
>
> However, I'd still lose all the man pages, and since I get a couple of "deparse may be incomplete" warnings, I worry that this may be introducing additional bugs.
>
> Is there a magic solution here, or is this a fool's errand?

No magic solution, and the following may not work, but it might.

Make a simple package with the correct DESCRIPTION file.  Install that 
somewhere new.  Then use the installed DESCRIPTION file and 
Meta/package.rds to replace the versions you got from 2.14.1.


It is possible to extract the man pages: the key step is 
tools:::fetchRdDB.  On my system

names(tools:::fetchRdDB('/Users/ripley/R/R-devel/library/MASS/help/MASS'))
tools:::fetchRdDB('/Users/ripley/R/R-devel/library/MASS/help/MASS', 'rlm')

work: the layout of the pages is a little odd.



>
> Thanks, Robert
>
> Robert McGehee, CFA
> Geode Capital Management, LLC
> One Post Office Square, 28th Floor | Boston, MA | 02109
> Direct: (617)392-8396
>
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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