Building Packages on Windows using .Rbuildignore (PR#7379)
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 19:32:25 +0100, Martin Maechler
<maechler@stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
"Duncan" == Duncan Murdoch <murdoch@stats.uwo.ca>
on Thu, 18 Nov 2004 16:36:03 +0100 (CET) writes:
Duncan> On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:38:47 +0000 (UTC), Gabor Duncan> Grothendieck <ggrothendieck@myway.com> wrote :
>> DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING .RBUILDIGNORE AND NOT >> >> The reason that the processing is different according to >> whether one uses .Rbuildignore or not is that R CMD build >> takes the .Rbuildignore file into account but R CMD >> install R CMD check R CMD build --binary do not take >> .Rbuildignore into account.
Duncan> Okay, now I understand. I think I'd call the last Duncan> of those a bug, and it would seem to me that the Duncan> install and check scripts should also respect this Duncan> directive. I've now copied this to the r-bugs list. Duncan> (This was reported for Windows; I don't know if it Duncan> applies to other platforms as well.) Yes it does (*), but I think it is NOT a bug but a feature, at least for "check" and "install" (*) and very much desired in some cases : For instance, the package developer may want more regression tests in <Pkg>/tests/ : 1) Have extra *.Rout.save files that are architecture dependent and hence not for general distribution of the package, but important for the package developer in order to assure that functionality doesn't change when the package is extended, reorganized, .... 2) Have more tests/*.R files that take a long time to run. Time that the package developer wants to spend, but doesn't dare to put on the daily CRAN or Bioconductor test suites. 3) similarly for vignettes 4) similar issues for experimental R/*.R files or man/*.Rd files for these. One I thing that would be quite useful and would even solve Gabor's problem: The introduction of a new command line switch, say "--build-ignore", to the commands 'R CMD check' and 'R CMD install'
Shouldn't that option be "--ignore-build-ignore"? :-) More seriously: I suspect that an on/off switch for the .Rbuildignore file wouldn't be sufficiently flexible: the same package author might want different things at different times, e.g. building a binary for Windows would include different files than a binary for another platform. We could put together some sort of system of conditionals within the .Rbuildignore file, but I think it would be better to just advise such package writers to maintain one or more .Rbuildignore.in files, and manually (or by makefile) copy the appropriate one in place first. Duncan Murdoch
-------- (*) I do agree that "R CMD build --binary" probably really should follow the ".Rbuildignore" file ``directives'' if it doesn't currently.