[R] Building customized R for Windows installer using 'make myR'

[David Winsemius]

On Apr 10, 2012, at 7:57 PM, Josh O'Brien wrote:

> Many thanks for your help.
>
> I mistakenly deleted my original message (not even knowing that was
> possible). Apologies for that.

Heh. I suspect it disappeared from your mail-client but not from the  
Archive (or for that matter the multiple rhelp mirrors on several  
different continents.  I'm assuming you mean this one?

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2012-April/309456.html

The moderation list gets the occasional request for message deletion  
for reasons of embarrassment or excessive anonymity, sometimes waving  
a European bit of web legislation ... and we tell them it's just not  
feasible. By the time the request comes in, the original message has  
circled the globe several times.

>
> For future reference, when a section of an R manual (like the bit  
> from the
> 'Installing R Under Windows Section' of the R-admin manual) no longer
> applies to the current version of R, what's the recommended course of
> action? Is it valuable to report it, and if so where?

A heads-up to the r-devel list would seem perfectly reasonable. R-Core  
does like to keep its doco current.

-- 
David.

>
> Thanks again,
>
> Josh O'Brien
>
>
> Uwe Ligges-3 wrote
>>
>> On 10.04.2012 20:24, Josh O'Brien wrote:
>>> I am attempting to build a customized R installer on Windows,  
>>> using the
>>> Inno
>>> Setup installer.
>>>
>>> I am following the instructions in Section 3.1.8 of the R  
>>> Installation
>>> and
>>> Administration Manual ("Building the Inno Setup installer"), which
>>> includes
>>> the following passage:
>>>
>>>       An alternative way to customize the installer starting with a
>>> binary
>>> distribution is to first
>>>       make a full installation of R from the standard installer  
>>> (that
>>> is,
>>> select ‘Full Installation’
>>>       from the ‘Select Components’ screen), then add packages and  
>>> make
>>> other
>>> customizations to
>>>       that installation. Then (after having customized file  
>>> ‘MkRules’,
>>> possibly via ‘MkRules.local’,
>>>       and having made R in the source tree) in ‘src/gnuwin32/ 
>>> installer’
>>> run
>>> :
>>>
>>>           make myR IMAGEDIR=rootdir
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, I have run into two difficulties, the first minor,  
>>> but the
>>> second more of a stumbling block:
>>>
>>> (1) The standard installer for R-2.15.0 does not offer a 'Full
>>> Installation'
>>> option on the 'Select Components' screen.
>>
>>
>> Yes, the options changed. See the Windows specific CHANGES.
>>
>>
>>
>>> (2) The standard installer for R-2.14.2 does offer such a 'Full
>>> Installation' option. However, despite having selected it, the newly
>>> installed R directory does not contain a R_HOME/src/gnuwin32/ 
>>> installer
>>> directory (let alone files 'MkRules' or 'MkRules.local'). R_HOME/ 
>>> src/
>>> does
>>> exist, but it contains only a directory named 'library'.
>>
>> Yes, the installer does not contain sources (also the one you can get
>> from CRAN does not contain them).
>> If you want to distributed such files as well, you have to change the
>> code that is used for building the Inno installer related files.
>>
>> Uwe Ligges
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Am I missing something important here, and if so what is it?
>>>
>>> As one alternative approach, could I employ the strategy described  
>>> in the
>>> quoted passage above with a version of R that I've compiled myself  
>>> and
>>> then
>>> edited slightly (by adding packages and making a few changes to
>>> Rprofile.site)?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Josh O'Brien
>>>
>>>
>>> --

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT