Distributing Executables.

Thanks Simon,

In this case, I am talking specifically about allowing CRAN to compile
source into an executable to be distributed, as discussed in the
second paragraphs "very special cases .. for example executable
programs". So, when someone runs install.packages("mypackage"), they
get a package that contains an executable that can be run from outside
of R.

Can I submit a package to CRAN that will compile source into an executable?

I hope this clears the mud on my first post.

Thanks!
dan

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 11:24 AM, Simon Urbanek
<simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:

On May 18, 2012, at 11:11 AM, Daniel Fuka wrote:

Sorry for this intrusion, but I am confused by two statements that
appear to conflict at some level in Writing R Extensions, and wanted
to make sure I understand the answer to:
Can we distribute a portable executable compiled from source by CRAN in CRAN?

The following section of Writing R Extensions appears to not be
addressing this issue, as in this case we are discussing portable CRAN
compiled binaries, and not binaries that are submitted to CRAN:
"A source package if possible should not contain binary executable
files: they are not portable, and a security risk if they are of the
appropriate architecture. R CMD check will warn about them unless they
are listed (one filepath per line) in a file BinaryFiles at the top
level of the package. Note that CRAN will no longer accept submissions
containing binary files even if they are listed."

The following section seems to indicate special cases in which
packages can create binary files:
"In very special cases packages may create binary files other than the
shared objects/DLLs in the src directory. Such files will not be
installed in multi-arch setting since R CMD INSTALL --libs-only is
used to merge multiple architectures and it only copies shared
objects/DLLs. If a package wants to install other binaries (for
example executable programs), it should to provide an R script
src/install.libs.R which will be run as part of the installation in
the src build directory instead of copying the shared objects/DLLs."

Once again, sorry for my confusion on this point. I just have what I
might consider a special case where it would be very handy to
distribute a cran compiled executable.

I don't quite follow - CARN obviously distributes binaries compiled by CRAN and those are called binary packages. Can you be more specific as of what you are asking about?  The two paragraphs you are quoting are about entirely different things - the first states that you can't include binaries in *source* packages and the second describes how you can build executables beside dynamic objects in packages so that CRAN can include them in *binary* packages. It doesn't cover distribution.

What you refer to are rules for *source* packages which can't distribute binaries, but you can always use a binary package (which contains binaries). Note that the issue in question is not who built the binary but whether it could have been injected by 3rd party or not (hence all binaries are disallowed in source packages since there is no way to tell).

Cheers,
Simon