[Rd] Building rinstaller using R-devel (3.2.0-to-be) halts when trying to copy html files

[Avraham Adler]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 8:36 PM, Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/01/2015 5:12 PM, Avraham Adler wrote:
>> As the build process, especially for Windows, is changing
>> significantly for R 3.2.0, I am trying to build R-devel in
>> preparation. When running `make rinstaller`, I get the following
>> error:
>>
>>     cp -p ../../../etc/x64/Makeconf R-devel/etc/x64
>>     mkdir -p R-devel/doc
>>     cp -p ../../../doc/CRAN_mirrors.csv R-devel/doc
>>     mkdir -p R-devel/doc/manual/images
>>     cp -pR ../../../doc/html R-devel/doc
>>     cp -p ../../../doc/manual/*.html ../../../doc/manual/*.pdf \
>>       R-devel/doc/manual
>>     cp: cannot stat '../../../doc/manual/*.html': No such file or directory
>>     make[1]: *** [imagedir] Error 1
>>     make[1]: Leaving directory `/cygdrive/f/R/R-devel/src/gnuwin32/installer'
>>     make: *** [rinstaller] Error 2
>>
>> Looking at the directories, I have "\doc\manual" and
>> "F:\R\R-devel\doc\html" and there are no .html files in the \manual
>> directory, only pdfs.
>>
>> I am building on Windows 7 64 bit, so the MkRules.local is being used,
>> and the pertinent settings therein include:
>>
>>     BUILD_HTML = YES
>>     MIKTEX = TRUE
>>     TEXI2ANY = missing
>>
>> Is it as simple as changing line 74 in the Makefile under
>> src/gnuwin32/installer from:
>>
>>     $(CP) -p $(R_HOME)/doc/manual/*.html $(R_HOME)/doc/manual/*.pdf \
>>
>> to
>>
>>     $(CP) -p $(R_HOME)/doc/html/*.html $(R_HOME)/doc/manual/*.pdf \
>>
>> Or is the problem that MIKTEX alone can no longer be used and texinfo
>> /must/ be installed (as is implied in
>> <http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-admin.html#Building-the-manuals>?
>
> Yes, for a complete build you need the texi2any program (and Perl).  R
> will still build well enough to run, but the help system is incomplete,
> and will require an Internet connection to access the manuals.
>
> Were you interested in distributing the version without the manuals, or
> is it just that you haven't updated your Rtools to include texi2any?
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>

I was afraid of that. I had updated Rtools with everything (Perl, ICU,
etc.) but was afraid texinfo would interfere with MikTex; my mistake.
Fixing that worked, thank you very much. In general, even though I
don't distribute binaries to others, I prefer to run through the build
all the way to risntaller and then run check-all to make sure
everything is working properly. Also, it allows me to use the
installer to install a production version of R to one subdirectory and
keep mu

Two points if I may:

1) The MkRules has the flag TEX2ANY and the texinfo zip has a flag
MAKEINFO which seems to require the same statement. I put both in the
MkRules.local, but which one should be used?
2) For windows users "/path/to/perl" may be a bit misleading. Most of
the other entries require the subdirectory name. This one seems to
require the full name of the executable (e.g.
"F:/Strawberry/perl/bin/perl.exe").

Once again, thank you,

Avi