[R] Basic package structure question

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 6/22/06, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> Jay Emerson wrote:
> > At the encouragement of many at UseR, I'm trying to build my first real
> > package. I have no C/Fortran code, just plain old R code, so it should be
> > rocket science.  On a Linux box, I used package.skeleton() to create a basic
> > package containing just one "hello world" type of function.  I edited the
> > DESCRIPTION file, changin the package name appropriately.  I edited the
> > hello.Rd file.  Upon running R CMD check hello, the only warning had to do
> > with the fact that src/ was empty (obviously I had no source in such a
> > simple package).  I doubt this is a problem.
> >
> > I was able to install and use the package successfully on the Linux system
> > from the .tar.gz file, so far so good!  Next, on to Windows, where the
> > problem arose:
> >
> > I created a zip file from inside the package directory: zip -r ../hello.zip
> > ./*
> >
> >
> Which package directory, the source or the installed copy?  I think this
> might work in the installed copy, but would not work on the source.
> It's not the documented way to build a binary zip, though.
> > When I moved this to my Windows machine and tried to install the package, I
> > received the following error:
> >
> >
> >> utils:::menuInstallLocal()
> >>
> > Error in unpackPkg(pkgs[i], pkgnames[i], lib, installWithVers) :
> >         malformed bundle DESCRIPTION file, no Contains field
> >
> > I only found one mention of this in my Google search, with no reply to the
> > thread.  The Contains field appears to be used for bundles, but I'm trying
> > to create a package, not a bundle.  This leads me to believe that a simple
> > zipping of the package directory structure is not the correct format for
> > Windows.
> >
> > Needless to say, there appears to be wide agreement that making packages
> > requires precision, but fundamentally a package should (as described in the
> > documentation) just be a collection of files and folders organized a certain
> > way.  If someone could point me to documentation I may have missed that
> > explains this, I would be grateful.
> >
>
> I think the "organized in a certain way" part is actually important.
> Using R CMD install --build is the documented way to achieve this.  It's
> not trivial to do this on Windows, because you need to set up a build
> environment first, but it's not horribly difficult.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jay

One idea that occurred to me in reading this would be to have a server
that one can send a package to and get back a Windows build to
eliminate having to set up a development environment.  Not sure if
this is feasible, particularly security aspects, but if it were it would
open up package building on Windows to a larger audience.