[R] Re: Problem with mgcv PACKAGES file format?

[Robert King]

Problem solved.

This is a bad interaction of packages installed from debian with the R
update.packages() system.

Moral of the story is don't try to update.packges() for any of the
packages installed as r-cran-package.name.here debian packages.

Robert.

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Robert King wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I'm getting this error (Version: 1.9.0-1 on a debian system)
>
> > update.packages("mgcv")
> trying URL `ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/cran/src/contrib/PACKAGES'
> ftp data connection made, file length 169516 bytes
> opened URL
> .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
> .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
> .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........
> .......... .....
> downloaded 165Kb
>
> Error in "colnames<-"(`*tmp*`, value = c("Package", "LibPath", pkgFlds)) :
>         attempt to set colnames on object with less than two dimensions
>
> The relevant section of the package file is:
>
> Package: mgcv
> Version: 1.0-8
> Author: Simon Wood
> Maintainer: Simon Wood
> Title: Multiple smoothing parameter estimation and GAMs by GCV
> Description: Routines for GAMs and other generalized ridge regression
>              with multiple smoothing parameter selection by GCV or UBRE.
>              Also GAMMs by REML or PQL. Includes a gam() function.
> Priority: recommended
> Depends: R (>= 1.9.0), nlme (>= 3.1-40), MASS (>= 7.1-11)
> License: GPL version 2 or later
> Packaged: Wed May 26 11:17:05 2004; simon
>
> Is the error a result of something I can't see in the format of this?  I'm
> guessing it must be because its occuring before the download attempts, so
> R won't have seen the actual package file?
>
>
> ----
> Robert King, Statistics, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences,
> University of Newcastle, Australia
> Room V133  ph +61 2 4921 5548
> Robert.King at newcastle.edu.au   http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/
>
> "It's easy to lie with statistics.  It's even easier to lie without them."
> 	-- Frederick Mosteller
>

----
Robert King, Statistics, School of Mathematical & Physical Sciences,
University of Newcastle, Australia
Room V133  ph +61 2 4921 5548
Robert.King at newcastle.edu.au   http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/

"It's easy to lie with statistics.  It's even easier to lie without them."
	-- Frederick Mosteller