[R] Warning when building packages and update suggestion

[Henrik Bengtsson]

I want to share this knowledge to save you the hours it took me to
troubleshoot the following problem. Maybe you already know about this, but I
certainly didn't. In the end I also suggest an update fix.

PROBLEM:
I have been building packages for a couple of months now without any
problems. However, a couple of hours ago I ran into a strange problem, which
I first couldn't understand or fix:

  >Rcmd build --binary R.base
  ...
  make[1]: *** [/tmp/Rbuild.468075/R.base/zzzz] Error 1
  make[1]: Leaving directory `/users/braju.com.R/public_html/R.base/R.base'
  make: *** [pkg-R.base] Error 2
  make: Leaving directory `/progs/R/rw1030/src/gnuwin32'
  *** Installation of R.base failed ***
  ...

REASON:
As usual you think that *you* didn't do anything different than usual.
However, yesterday I added a library(R.base) in my ~/R.profile file, i.e.
every time [R] starts the library R.base is automatically loaded. After
imitating the same make calls as 'Rcmd build --binary R.base' does and
looking into on of the temporary files created, I saw that during the build
process [R] was started. I turned out that [R] failed because it tried to
load the library I was currently building and from the previous build I did
an error was introduced. So, the installed R.base didn't work, which made
any try rebuild it to fail.

SOLUTION:
My solution was to remove ~/R.profile and everything worked as usual.


UPDATE SUGGESTION:
I don't know much about the package building process, but couldn't [R]
*always* be started with the options --no-site-file (Suppress reading of the
site-wide startup profile) and --no-init-file (Suppress reading of the
directory or user's .Rprofile file) when Rcmd build is used? I was trying to
look into the make files where this should be done, but I couldn't find it.


Henrik Bengtsson
Lund University/UC Berkeley

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