[R] debian packages and html help on linux

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 06:14:42PM +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Tue, 25 May 2004, Kari Ruohonen wrote:
> 
> > I have a fresh installation of R from debian unstable packages. The
> > html index found in /usr/lib/R/doc/html/index.html works in Mozilla
> > and under the link of 'packages' on this page I have a list and
> > corresponding links. However, it appears that not all packages I have
> > installed from available deb files via apt-get, will get their link
> > updated to this package index. Specifically, from packages
> > r-cran-boot, r-cran-car, r-cran-coda, r-cran-design, r-cran-effects,
> > r-cran-foreign, r-cran-gregmisc, r-cran-hmisc, r-cran-its,
> > r-cran-lattice, r-cran-lmtest, r-cran-mcmcpack, r-cran-mgcv,
> > r-cran-multcomp, r-cran-relimp, r-cran-rgl, r-cran-rpart, r-cran-sm,
> > r-cran-tseries, r-cran-vr, r-omegahat-ggobi, r-cran-kernsmooth none
> > appeared to html package index. This also means that html search
> > doesn't find functions within these packages although it otherwise
> > works perfectly with my Mozilla.
> > 
> > What shall I do to get also these package to the package index?
> 
> Use the correct index: see ?help.start.  Installing a package does not 
> update /usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages.html, but help.start() creates a 
> current index dynamically.
> 
> If you really want to do this without running R, use
> 
> R CMD perl /usr/lib/R/share/perl/build-help.pl --htmllists
> 
> to update the static index.  From inside R you can run 
> make.packages.html().  In both cases, you need write permission in 
> /usr/lib/R/doc/html.

That sounds like something we could easily execute via the postinst script
once the package as been unpacked. As that step runs as root, permissions
would not be an issue.

Would that step alleviate the need for the per-user ~/.R/ index ?

Dirk

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