[R-SIG-Mac] Built on Mac, Installing on Windows - should this work?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 30/11/2009 11:10 AM, Bryan Hanson wrote:
>> Hi R Mac Folks... A question about using Mac-built pkgs on the dreaded
>> Windows machines.
>> 
>> I have successfully checked, built and installed a package on my Mac.  The
>> package tarball is at github.com/bryanhanson/ChemoSpec if you care to try
>> installing it.  It was checked and built with defaults, so I did
>> 
>> > R CMD check ChemoSpec
>> > R CMD build ChemoSpec
>> 
>> And everything was fine.  I can install it and run it on my Mac no problem.
>> I believe it is a ³source² package ­ there is no compiled code, it¹s all
>> straightfoward R.
>> 
>> Now, I want to test the installation on Windows (because students have to
>> use it next semester).  I¹m having a variety of problems getting it 
>> upzipped
>> and installed.  Before I spend a lot of time trouble shooting the Windows
>> aspect, and here¹s my question, should this package as I built it and so
>> forth work on  Windows without modification?  Or do I have to do the
>> check/build with different options?  Or do I have to do the entire process
>> on a Windows machine (pray not!).  I¹ve looked around in the manuals and
>> help pages a bit, there doesn¹t seem to be any hint that a different 
>> process
>> is needed.
>> 
>
> The source tarball (the .tar.gz file) would be fine on Windows, but most 
> Windows users don't have the tools to install it.  Since you don't have any 
> compiled code it's probably not hard to put together a zip file equivalent to 
> what R CMD INSTALL --binary would produce on Windows, but it's probably 
> easier to use Uwe Ligge's package building service, available at 
> http://129.217.207.166.

I agree with the conclusion (not least as it checks the package works 
on Windows), but in current R (2.10.0) you actually don't need any 
extra tools to install such a source package on Windows.

It's all in the manuals ....


> Duncan Murdoch
>> By the way, I can manually get the entire package intact as text files to
>> the proper Windows directory, but R claims it is not a valid installed
>> package.  Any of the RGui Windows means of installing the package give
>> various problems.  I¹ll keep trouble shooting these but I wanted to double
>> check that what I am trying to do should work.
>> 
>> Thanks, Bryan
>> **************
>> Bryan Hanson
>> Acting Chair
>> Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry
>> DePauw University
>> 602 S. College Avenue
>> Greencastle, IN 46135
>> PHONE     765-658-4602
>> FAX     765-658-6084
>> hanson at depauw.edu
>> http://academic.depauw.edu/~hanson/deadpezsociety.html
>> http://www.depauw.edu/acad/chemistry/
>> http://academic.depauw.edu/~hanson/UMP/index.html
>> 
>> 
>>
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-- 
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