Package Installation in RGui (PR#7262)

Hello!

I have just encountered the same situation as Heather and also Paul Gilbert at

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/devel/05/02/2095.html

I went into install.packages() in current release as well as in R-devel and
there is really no problem with \ or /. However, I also had the same warning

install.packages("RODBC")

[... snip ...]
Delete downloaded files (y/N)? y

updating HTML package descriptions
Warning message: 
unable to move temp installation 'N:/Ovce/Programi/R/rw2001/library\file27583/RODBC' to 'N:/Ovce/Programi/R/rw2001/library/RODBC' 

The warning is issued from this part of install.packages()

if (ret == 0) {
                ## Move the new package to the install lib and
                ## remove our temp dir
                ret <- file.rename(file.path(tmpDir, curPkg), instPath)
                if(!ret) warning("unable to move temp installation ",
                                 sQuote(file.path(tmpDir, curPkg)),
                                 " to ",
                                 sQuote(instPath), call. = FALSE)
            } else {
                ## !! Can't revert to old 'zip.unpack' as it would
                ## !! potentially leave cruft from a bundle in there
                stop("Can not remove prior installation of package ",
                     sQuote(curPkg), call. = FALSE)
            }

"Problem" lies in 

ret <- file.rename(file.path(tmpDir, curPkg), instPath)

I went through the whole function "by hand" and at first the above line
didn't moved tmpDir to instPath. I tried several times and after a while
it was successfull. It is strange that it happens only with some packages
i.e. in my case with RODBC and car. I also noted that line above takes 
quite a lot of time to "accomplish" its work. It actually causes R to 
freeze for a moment. If I launched

file.rename(file.path(tmpDir, curPkg), instPath)

move was done in a moment. I know, that this comment is not the answer 
to the problem. However, someone might come with that.

One more thing. I have R installed on networked disk. I assume that Heather 
does also, since disk letter is H. On the other hand, Paul reported problems
with C disk.

Windows XP SP1
R 2.0.1

Full_Name: Heather Turner
Version: 2.0.0
OS: Windows NT
Submission from: (NULL) (137.205.8.2)


I tried using the Packages menu to install the gam package and get the following
output:

local({a <- CRAN.packages()

+ install.packages(select.list(a[,1],,TRUE), .libPaths()[1], available=a,
dependencies=TRUE)})
trying URL `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/PACKAGES'
Content type `text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1' length 21246 bytes
opened URL
downloaded 20Kb

trying URL `http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.0/gam_0.92.zip'
Content type `application/zip' length 224167 bytes
opened URL
downloaded 218Kb

package 'gam' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

Delete downloaded files (y/N)? y

Warning message:
unable to move temp installation 'H:/rw2000/library\file15762/gam' to
'H:/rw2000/library/gam'

I get the same message if I opt to delete the downloaded files and the
same problem if I try to install from a downloaded .zip file instead -
not really surprising as seems to "unpack" file okay, but loses the
temporary file. As the syntax of the file path for the temporary file is
incorrect, I'm assuming this is a bug in install.packages or one of the
functions it calls...

Since you _incorrectly_ assume that the syntax is incorrect, the rest of
your assumption is incorrect. As the FAQ asks, please don't speculate
about things you are not expert about, but stick to facts. Also as the
FAQ asks, don't misuse R-bugs for things you do not know _for sure_ are
bugs in R.

FYI, Windows accepts both /and \ in file paths, including a mixture. If
your speculation was correct install.packages() would work for no one, and
do you seriously think that such a bug would go unreported and unfixed.

We have seen this once before, and it was a Windows bug solved by updating
Windows to the latest set of patches. Since you have not reported a
precise version of Windows, it is hard for us to know what you were using,
but if you mean NT4.0, that is rather old (last Service Pack five years
ago I read yesterday).

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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

--
Lep pozdrav / With regards,
    Gregor GORJANC

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