stabledist

[Martin Maechler]

Hi Yohan,

[Leaving away   "Kley, Oliver"  ..]

good to see you are back from "celebrating your Doctor" (in
Southern Africa, right?  I hope you've enjoyed it ... as a honeymoon)

(see inline)
>>>>> Yohan Chalabi <yohan.chalabi at rmetrics.org>
>>>>>     on Wed, 7 Nov 2012 08:41:01 +0100 writes:

    > On Oct 29, 2012, at 12:27 PM, Martin Maechler wrote:

    >> Dear Oliver
    >> (I'm writing in English because of the CC).
    >> 
    >> 
    >> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Kley, Oliver <oliver.kley at tum.de> wrote:
    >>> Lieber Herr Maechler,
    >>> 
    >>> ich wollte das stabledist package von rmetrics installieren, wie im wiki beschrieben:
    >>> 
    >>> 
    >>> The script installs all Rmetrics packages from your default CRAN repository ('repos'). This will ensure that all packages are up-to-date.
    >>> 
    >>> Open an R process and type the following :
    >>> 
    >>> source("http://www.rmetrics.org/Rmetrics.R")
    >>> install.Rmetrics()
    >>> 
    >>> 
    >>> allerdings, neben der installation zahlreicher pakete, kam insbesondere die folgende meldung, in deren vorletzter zeile steht, dass stabledist nicht verfuegbar ist --koennen Sie mir weiterhelfen?
    >>> 
    >>> 
    >>> 
    >>> + source("http://www.rmetrics.org/Rmetrics.R")
    >>> +    install.Rmetrics()
    >>> Warning in install.packages(pkgs = pkgs, ...) :
    >>> argument 'lib' is missing: using '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library'
    >>> Warning in install.packages(pkgs = pkgs, ...) :
    >>> 'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable
    >>> --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
    >>> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
    >>> Warning: dependency ‘stabledist’ is not available
    >>> also installing the dependencies ‘numDeriv’, ‘DistributionUtils’, ‘GeneralizedHyperbolic’
    >> 
    >> Yes, indeed this is a bug in the  install.Rmetrics() function;

    > Hi Martin,

    > install.Rmetrics() is a plain wrapper of install.packages with the list of Rmetrics packages:

    > install.Rmetrics <- function (pkgs = pkgsRmetrics(), ...)
    > install.packages(pkgs = pkgs, ...)

Ok.
But where is the  pkgsRmetrics() source?
Is that inside R-forge/Rmetrics/   {I think it should}


    > What Oliver is missing is either write permission for "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library" or the "lib" argument to specify a library path in his home directory.

Ok, I may have misunderstood the problem

    > Regards,
    > Yohan

    >> Unfortunately, even though I'm part of Rmetrics-core,
    >> I have no write access to  http://www.rmetrics.org/Rmetrics.R
    >> which defines the  install.Rmetrics() function  and so I cannot fix it.
    >> 
    >> HOWEVER, there is an easy workaround:
    >> do
    >> 
    >> install.packages("stabledist")
    >> 
    >> before doing the other installations.
    >> 
    >> Please let me know if you have problems, observe pecularities, ... in package
    >> 'stabledist'.

as Oliver never replied to the above suggestion of mine
(which I find a bit impolite),
I think you are right, Yohan, and his problem was completely
different.

BTW: The drawback of using this extra  install.Rmetrics()
wrapper is that we (you) have to deal with all the silly user
errors.
If they were told to use install.packages(), they would ask on
R-help (or a web forum or such) and we would not have to deal
with the user problem.

Martin

    >> 
    >> Best regards,
    >> Martin Mächler
    >> 
    >> 
    >>> 
    >>> Viele Gruesse
    >>> 
    >>> Oliver Kley
    >>> 
    >> 
    >> _______________________________________________
    >> Rmetrics-core mailing list
    >> Rmetrics-core at r-project.org
    >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/rmetrics-core
    >>