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R CMD build looking for texi2dvi in the wrong place (R-devel)

5 messages · Simon Urbanek, Duncan Murdoch, Dan Tenenbaum

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R CMD build fails with recent R-devel because it is looking for texi2dvi in /usr/local/bin, but on this system, MacTex has installed it in /usr/bin.

$ R CMD build IRanges
* checking for file 'IRanges/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* preparing 'IRanges':
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* cleaning src
* installing the package to build vignettes
* creating vignettes ... ERROR
[...]
Warning in sub(object$syntax$docexpr, val, chunk[pos[1L]]) :
  argument 'replacement' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used
Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,  : 
  Running 'texi2dvi' on 'IRangesOverview.tex' failed.
Messages:
sh: /usr/local/bin/texi2dvi: No such file or directory
Calls: <Anonymous> -> texi2pdf -> texi2dvi
Execution halted

That's with:

R Under development (unstable) (2015-01-11 r67421)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks)

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base 

The same command works without error on:

R Under development (unstable) (2014-11-11 r66970)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

Setting 
options(texi2dvi='/usr/bin/texi2dvi')

in my ~/.Rprofile did not help, I suspect because R CMD build runs buildVignettes() in a subprocess started with --vanilla. Creating a symlink from /usr/bin/texi2dvi to /usr/local/bin/texi2dvi gave me a "too many levels of symbolic links" error. Making it a hard link works, but seems like a real hack (what if the executable was not relocatable?). 

Thanks in advance,
Dan
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Dan,
On Jan 12, 2015, at 7:50 PM, Dan Tenenbaum <dtenenba at fredhutch.org> wrote:

            
No, you're looking at the wrong package - texi2dvi comes from texinfo which is now mandatory in version 5.2+ located in /usr/local since OS X comes with an old version. You should install it from

http://r.research.att.com/libs/texinfo-5.2-darwin10.tar.gz

Cheers,
Simon
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----- Original Message -----
Thanks, was there an announcement that I missed about this and if so, where was it? 

Dan
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On 12/01/2015 6:26 PM, Dan Tenenbaum wrote:
It has been in the NEWS file since Jan 6.  You can see it there, and
would have seen it announced here:

http://developer.r-project.org/blosxom.cgi/R-devel/2015/01/06#n2015-01-06

Duncan Murdoch
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----- Original Message -----
Thanks, I'll subscribe to these feeds.
Dan