[Rd] Small inaccuracy in the Writing R Extensions manual

Berwin A Turlach Berwin.Turlach at gmail.com
Tue Jan 12 17:11:35 CET 2016


G'day Duncan,

On Tue, 12 Jan 2016 07:32:05 -0500
Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/01/2016 11:59 PM, Berwin A Turlach wrote:
> > G'day all,
> >
> > In Chapter 1.4 (Writing package vignettes) the Writing R Extensions
> > manual states:
> >
> > 	By default @code{R CMD build} will run @code{Sweave} on all
> > 	Sweave vignette source files in @file{vignettes}.  If
> > 	@file{Makefile} is found in the vignette source directory,
> > then @code{R CMD build} will try to run @command{make} after the
> > 	@code{Sweave} runs, otherwise @code{texi2pdf} is run on each
> > 	@file{.tex} file produced.
> >
> > This does not seem to be quite correct as stated.  'R CMD build'
> > seems to run make only if there was a file in the directory
> > vignettes that Sweave successfully processed.   If the directory
> > vignettes contains a Makefile and subdirectories in which the
> > actual vignettes are, 'R CMD build' does not run make.
> >
> 
> I think it is behaving as documented:  it says it will run make after 
> Sweave, so if Sweave never ran, neither would make.  

Sorry, I disagree.  It says that  "R CMD build will try to run make
after the Sweave runs".  For me (and probably others) "after the Sweave
runs" (note the plural) include the cases of "no Sweave runs" and "one
Sweave run".  Otherwise the case of one vignette in the vignettes
directory would produce undocumented (albeit expected) behaviour. :-)

Cheers,

	Berwin



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