Small inaccuracy in the Writing R Extensions manual
On 12/01/2016 11:11 AM, Berwin A Turlach wrote:
G'day Duncan, On Tue, 12 Jan 2016 07:32:05 -0500 Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/01/2016 11:59 PM, Berwin A Turlach wrote:
G'day all,
In Chapter 1.4 (Writing package vignettes) the Writing R Extensions
manual states:
By default @code{R CMD build} will run @code{Sweave} on all
Sweave vignette source files in @file{vignettes}. If
@file{Makefile} is found in the vignette source directory,
then @code{R CMD build} will try to run @command{make} after the
@code{Sweave} runs, otherwise @code{texi2pdf} is run on each
@file{.tex} file produced.
This does not seem to be quite correct as stated. 'R CMD build'
seems to run make only if there was a file in the directory
vignettes that Sweave successfully processed. If the directory
vignettes contains a Makefile and subdirectories in which the
actual vignettes are, 'R CMD build' does not run make.
I think it is behaving as documented: it says it will run make after Sweave, so if Sweave never ran, neither would make.
Sorry, I disagree. It says that "R CMD build will try to run make after the Sweave runs". For me (and probably others) "after the Sweave runs" (note the plural) include the cases of "no Sweave runs" and "one Sweave run". Otherwise the case of one vignette in the vignettes directory would produce undocumented (albeit expected) behaviour. :-)
Regardless of that, there's a problem if there is no vignette in the main directory. R uses the vignette filename and content to figure out which vignette engine to use. If there's just a Makefile, how would R know what to display? Which .html file or .pdf file corresponds to which source file, and where should R go to find the .R file? So I don't think those things can really be handled as vignettes. They can still be handled as additional files in the inst/doc directory, but we probably aren't going to be able to give them full vignette status. Duncan Murdoch