[R-SIG-Mac] Consistency of information about installed packages

[Simon Urbanek]

Don,

On Apr 28, 2005, at 2:34 PM, Don MacQueen wrote:

> I'm sorry, I thought the non-zero exit status message was  
> sufficient and definitive.
>
> Yes, it had failed. Prior to that message, it had said, in bright  
> red text,
>
> make: *** [deldir.so] Error 1
> ERROR: compilation failed for package 'deldir'

Ok, that qualifies for "failed installation" :).

> library(deldir) works in the sense that it returns no error or  
> warning message.

This is the reason why R.app shows it as installed - the package is  
there and loads. In fact R.app simply asks R about the package list -  
it doesn't try to determine anything on its own. Hence this is not a  
problem in R.app (and has nothing to do with consistency of  
information about installed packages - because it is consistent), but  
rather something with the package installation.

> After all this, there is a folder,
>   ~/Library/R/Library/deldir

Oh, ok - you're installing your own private copy then.

On Apr 28, 2005, at 2:53 PM, Don MacQueen wrote:
> The only hint I saw, and it showed up in the Installer, was to  
> remove copies of old RAqua. In fact, it says "previous versions of  
> the Cocoa GUI are fine". Maybe I didn't look hard enough, but that  
> looked pretty definite to me.

It's ok to install over previous version, no problem, but if you use  
your own private R packages, you cannot share them across R versions  
(that's why personally I recommend to avoid that practice unless you  
have no admin access). The safest thing is to delete ~/Library/R  
after upgrade. We don't want the installer to be destructive, that's  
why don't do it by default.

Nevertheless, I still don't know how you happen to get the half- 
installed package. Did you use the Package Installer or did you  
install it manually? If so, can you reproduce it even after deleting  
~/Library/R?

Cheers,
Simon