[R-SIG-Finance] PerformanceAnalytics version 0.9.6 released to CRAN

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 2 January 2008 at 23:23, Joe W. Byers wrote:
| Great looking package!  I was installing it on my linux server using my 
| VNC connection and a terminal window as su root, so I was only using the 
| command windows, when I encountered an error with the install.  The 
| package requires tclk which will not load unless the display is set 

This is due to one of the Rmetrics packages, I have forgotten which, that is
loading tcltk.

| correctly on the linux terminal shell.  I had to physically log on to 
| the linux machine to get it to install.  I am not sure if there is a 
| workaround or if you can change the package to only load the tclk 
| library as needed, not depend on it.  This is not a major issue for me 

One way around is to modify the package's DESCRIPTION file and to set
LazyLoad to 'no' --- you can do that with a Perl one-liner after expanding
the tarball.  That's basically what I used to do for the Debian packages as
they are 'assembled' in a chroot without $DISPLAY.

The more elegant way around we use now is to use xvfb-run as suggested by
Charles Plessy: it invokes a virtual X11 session using xvfb. One Debian, this
means also installing the "xvfb, xbase-clients, xfonts-base" packages and to
then call

	 xvfb-run R CMD INSTALL -l $(InstalLDir) --clean $(Target)

instead of just 

	R CMD INSTALL -l $(InstalLDir) --clean $(Target)

You should be able to work that out with your sysadmin if need be. 

Hth, Dirk

| but being able to remotely connect and run a superuser shell is 
| convenient.  This will impact anyone that has a cron job that 
| automatically updates the R packages on machines.



-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.