[R] Homemade packages.

[Rolf Turner]

Dear Brian:

Thanks for your response to my posting to the r-help list.

You wrote:

>  You shouldn't be installing into `.' You install packages into a
>  *library*

	(a) Installing into `.' seemed to work fine under 1.3.1.

	(b) What then, is a ``library''?  I took ``library'' to
	mean a directory containing a number of subdirectories,
	each of which constituted a package.  So when I am located
	in ~rolf/Rlib --- which is what I want to be my ``personal
	library'' --- and I install into `.' then I ***am***
	installing into a library, since `.' ***is*** a library.

	If the foregoing does not make sense, then I am clearly
	misunderstanding the nature of the library/packages
	structure.  And if this is indeed the case, then I think
	the documentation should be clarified.  The documentation
	currently says

		A package consists of a subdirectory containing the
		files DESCRIPTION and INDEX, and the subdirectories
		R, data, demo, exec, inst, man, src, and tests (some
		of which can be missing).

	and

		To install into the library tree `lib', use
		`R CMD INSTALL -l lib pkgs'.

		Both `lib' and the elements of `pkgs' may be absolute
		or relative path names.

	There appears to me to no special requirements for the
	directory `lib' and in particular nothing saying that `lib'
	cannot be the current working directory.

>  and the default (R_HOME/library if R_LIBS is unset) is normally
>  sufficient.

	I am working on a multi-user system, not on a PC.  I am not
	working as root, and I am trying to install a package in a
	***personal*** library, NOT in a generally available
	``system'' library.

>  Yes, if you install onto the sources it will now wipe out what it
>  thinks of as older and unnecessary files, and that is new in
>  1.4.0.

	That seems to me to be at the very least a dangerous
	design flaw.  To destroy code without warning and without
	saving a back-up --- even if the user is doing something
	stupid (and given that what I was doing used to work in
	version 1.3.1 I don't think it was all ***that*** stupid)
	--- is asking for trouble.  I had to re-write a good bit
	of code and documentation because of this behaviour.

					cheers,

						Rolf
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