[R-pkg-devel] The Help (e.g. links) is not working for my packages

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 07/08/2017 3:41 AM, David.Kaethner at dlr.de wrote:
> Hello,
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> I am hoping to post to the right mailing list, if not apologies!
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> I have recently written my first couple packages, relying on devtools and roxygen. Everything is done in RStudio (details regarding the setup: see end of text).
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> But the help is not working! Specifically:
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> On Windows 7:
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> * functions: I cannot click the links in the 'help'-panel. Or at least nothing happens when I click them.
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> * DESCRIPTION: If I build the package locally, it has the same issues as the packages. If I install the packages from Github (devtools::install_github) or from a network drive, it works.
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> * The "my_package::my_function" syntax throws an error. Once I enter 'my_package::' and click TAB, the following error appears in the console: "Error in gzfile(file, "rb") : cannot open the connection"
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> * "?my_package::my_function" brings me to the function overview page for the package, but not to the help page for the my_function()
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> * the link itself (on the function overview page) looks inocuous: http://127.0.0.1:44391/help/library/helpers/html/my_function.html
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> I would love to do a Traceback on this, but I do not know how, since it only happens when hitting TAB. I have done a Traceback for "?my_package::my_function", it just returns the path to where the help should be, like "D:/Home/R/Rpackages/my_package/help/my_function".
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> On MacOS Sierra:
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> * DESCRIPTION can always be opened, no matter how the package is installed
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> * when clicking on functions in the help panel, the known error appears (as text in the help panel): "Error in gzfile(file, "rb") : cannot open the connection"
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> It gets much weirder: When installing the package for the very first time, it seems to work! But after that it quits working, even not when I delete the package, re-install R, re-install RStudio, and create the package from scratch.
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> I really wish I was kidding with all of this. I have tried every debugging-idea that came to my mind, including (but not limited to):
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> * the .Rd-files are generated, they definitely are not missing
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> * taking an auto-generated DESCRIPTION file
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> * removing every function file save for a test file
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> * copying content from a function file into the auto-generated "hello.R" file
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> * changing the encoding from UTF-8 to WINDOWS-1252
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> * as mentioned, trying everying both on Windows and MacOS, and trying different ways of installation
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> * as mentioned, re-installing both R and RStudio
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> I would enormously appreciate it if anyone has an idea how to get a handle on this, any suggestions are welcome!

Nothing that you've written is reproducible by others.  See if you can 
put together a short self-contained series of instructions that display 
the problems (or just one of them).  It might involve installing from 
Github, or making a package tarball available somewhere.

Duncan Murdoch