[R] Help with installing a .tar.gz package on windows

[Lucy Leigh]

Hi everyone,

Thanks to everyone for all the advice. I should have been clearer in my first email, the version of 'PReMiuM' I have is not
the one available on CRAN at the moment, but a version I was sent by one of the authors, Silvia Liveriani, with a small bug fixed.
I don't know if this is the same as the next version to be released, or whether the next will be different again. I asked about
compiling it myself because I didn't want to bother the authors again if doing so was going to be a simple task I could
do myself, which I now realise is not the case. 

I think the best option seems to me to be to contact the authors again and request permission to send the version to
winbuilder to be compiled for me. 

Thank you also Bill Dunlap for your detailed instructions on how to use RTools, I am sure this will come in handy for me
in the future too, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it all out for me.

Regards,
Lucy Leigh


>>> Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> 12/07/2013 6:03 am >>>
On 11/07/2013 20:21, David Winsemius wrote:
>
> On Jul 11, 2013, at 1:37 AM, Rolf Turner wrote:
>
>> On 11/07/13 17:57, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>> On 11/07/2013 01:22, David Winsemius wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Jul 10, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Lucy Leigh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>> I have had a look at the manual but it makes no sense to me. I have
>>>>> downloaded RTools, and the InnoSetup,
>>>>> but I don't understand how to use these to install my package? Am I
>>>>> meant to be writing commands
>>>>> in R itself, or in these other things I've downloaded?
>>>>
>>>> Since you are clearly out of your league with respect to compiling from source, now is the time to ask (again), why are you not installing the binary package?
>>>>
>>>> At the R command line just type:
>>>>
>>>> install.packages("PReMiuM")  # should default to type="win.binary" and use a CRAN mirror
>>>>
>>>
>>> Or as she seems to want to use a later version than on CRAN, to ask again why she does not use winbuilder.
>>>
>>>
>> But the winbuilder web page explicitly says:
>>
>>> Please do not upload packages of other maintainers (particularly not without changing the Maintainer field to your own e-mail address, if you have permissions to do that), because the maintainer indicated in the maintainer field of the DESCRIPTION file get response from us. Please do not upload BioConductor packages or CRAN packages. Both BioConductor and CRAN do have build systems. If BioConductor or CRAN packages are not available for Windows, there is a certainly a reason and also this service won't be able to build the package properly.
>>
>> So it would appear that it is *not* advisable for Ms. Leigh to use winbuilder.
>
> I read that paragraph as saying that if a specific package , i.e. a particular numbered version, is already on CRAN or the BioC server, then do not duplicate effort. Also do not submit if a CRAN compilation resulted in an error. Especially in light of Prof. Ripley's (reiterated) advice, I did not read it as saying that a pre-release update to an existing package should not be submitted (after suitable alterations of the DESCRIPTION file.)

You read correctly, and indeed this is what the R manuals and the rw-FAQ 
say.  This is all assuming that Lucy does have Silvia's (the author of 
PReMiuM) permission, but given that she has a unreleased version, that 
seems eminently reasonable.

I am CCing Uwe Ligges (the provider of the winbuilder service) in case 
he wants to expand the statement.  Although winbuilder does not have a 
large capacity, new hardware was acquired fairly recently and it is not 
as hard-pressed as it was.

In the particular case of PReMiuM compiling is tricky (it needs the 
right version of Boost).  And because we've been here before, I know 
that winbuilder has a suitable version of Boost.

An alternative would be for Silvia to submit that version to winbuilder 
and send the link to Lucy to download.

-- 
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