[R] Installing on Windows packages build on Unix

[Roger Bivand]

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Giovanni Petris wrote:

> 
> Hello,
> 
> I wanted to share with a colleague a few R functions that I wrote. To
> this purpose, I created a small package on my machine (Unix) and
> emailed it to her. Now she is having troubles installing the package
> on her Windows machine. It seems that on her side, install.packages
> looks for a "zip" file - while I have created a "tar.gz" file. I tried
> to build the package with the --use-zip options but that didn't work. 

The package you built was, almost certainly, a source package when what 
your colleague needs to install is a binary package, rolled up in a *.zip. 
If you'll be doing this more than once, follow R for Windows FAQ 3.1:

"... read the file readme.packages. You will need to collect and install 
several tools to use this: you can download them via the portal at 
http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/. Once you have done so, just run 
R CMD INSTALL pkgname."

on a Windows machine - then you'll be able to do this whenever you need 
to (see "Simple ports" for your case). It just works when you follow the 
marked path through the magic swamp; if you leave the path, you sink 
without trace.

> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> TIA,
> Giovanni
> 
> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no