[R] debian packages and html help on linux

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 25 May 2004, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

> 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.

Might be a good idea.  R (except on Windows/MacOSX) is not really set up 
for binary package installs, but on Windows install.packages() does the 
R-level equivalent (and I remembered wrongly: on Unix make.packages.html() 
works in tmpdir/.R).

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

Actually, it is per-session in a tempdir these days.  Not really, as
there can be several library trees in use.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595