[R] Installing packages from ZIP files

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

I asked about installing R packages from ZIP files,
specifically with respect to the Rmetrics packages.

"Sean Davis" <sdavis2 at mail.nih.gov> asked:
	Have you tried R CMD INSTALL filename.zip?
	If that didn't work, could you simply unzip filename.zip and
	install using R CMD INSTALL filename?
	If you can't unzip the zip files (using command unzip),
	that may be the problem.
	
Yes, I have tried R CMD INSTALL filename.zip, and it doesn't work.
I can unzip the files, and I get perfectly reasonable-looking
directory trees when I do this (except for the thrice-accursed MS-DOS
carriage returns all over the place, which presumably do R no harm).

f% ls -l *.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 ok       comsci    472733 May 19 13:57 evir_1.0.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 ok       comsci   1391119 May 19 14:01 fBasics_190.10051.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 ok       comsci    255366 May 19 13:56 fExtremes_190.10051.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 ok       comsci    370293 May 19 13:57 fOptions_190.10051.zip
-rw-r--r--   1 ok       comsci    938564 May 19 13:59 fSeries_190.10051.zip
f% unzip -l evir_1.0.zip
Archive:  evir_1.0.zip
 Length    Date    Time    Name
 ------    ----    ----    ----
   1875  11-21-02  14:24   evir/INDEX
     37  11-21-02  14:24   evir/TITLE
   2174  11-21-02  14:24   evir/RCHANGES
   1923  11-21-02  14:24   evir/README
    624  11-21-02  14:24   evir/DESCRIPTION
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/R/
  49555  11-21-02  14:24   evir/R/evir
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/demo/
    246  11-21-02  14:24   evir/demo/00Index  ...
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/data/
    367  11-21-02  14:24   evir/data/00Index  ...
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/man/
  41581  11-21-02  14:24   evir/man/evir.Rd   ...
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/help/
    644  11-21-02  14:24   evir/help/AnIndex  ...
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/html/
   4867  11-21-02  14:24   evir/html/00Index.html ...
   1165  11-21-02  14:24   evir/html/bmw.html
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/latex/
    781  11-21-02  14:24   evir/latex/bmw.tex ...
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/R-ex/
    295  11-21-02  14:24   evir/R-ex/decluster.R ...
   4971  11-21-02  14:24   evir/CONTENTS
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/chtml/
  52043  11-21-02  14:24   evir/chtml/evir.chm
      0  11-21-02  14:24   evir/
 ------                    -------
1150125                    161 files

But

f% /users/local/bin/R CMD INSTALL evir_1.0.zip
gzip: evir_1.0.zip has more than one entry--rest ignored
tar: tape blocksize error
error: cannot extract package from 'evir_1.0.zip':
	No such file or directory for reading errors.
f% /users/local/bin/R CMD INSTALL fBasics_190.10051.zip
gzip: fBasics_190.10051.zip has more than one entry--rest ignored
tar: blocksize = 0
error: cannot extract package from 'fBasics_190.10051.zip':
	No such file or directory for reading errors.
f% /users/local/bin/R CMD INSTALL fExtremes_190.10051.zip
gzip: fExtremes_190.10051.zip has more than one entry--rest ignored
tar: blocksize = 0
error: cannot extract package from 'fExtremes_190.10051.zip':
	No such file or directory for reading errors.

R CMD INSTALL --help
talks about *making* ZIP files, but says nothing about *using* ZIP files.

I would have assumed, on the grounds of silence, that R couldn't install
from ZIP files except that www.rmetrics.org evidently think it *can*.

The suggestion to unzip the file and then pass the name of the
*directory* (not a plain file) to R CMD INSTALL seems to be working.

Perhaps one sentence could be added to ?INSTALL or R CMD INSTALL --help
saying "To install from a ZIP file, first unzip the file and then install
the resulting directory."