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Windows Source Install Without Rtools

14 messages · Dirk Eddelbuettel, Gabor Grothendieck, Simon Urbanek +1 more

#
Regarding this from this week:

2.10.0 PACKAGE INSTALLATION (Windows)
It is possible to install source packages without Rtools provided they
have no compiled code and no configure.win or cleanup.win script.

- what are the instructions to perform such a source install?
- I assume one still needs MiKTeX -- is that right?
- is the source install done from a tar.gz (in which case one would
need tar to create it) or directly from the source directory tree?
#
On 17 September 2009 at 11:32, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
| Regarding this from this week:
| 
| 2.10.0 PACKAGE INSTALLATION (Windows)
| It is possible to install source packages without Rtools provided they
| have no compiled code and no configure.win or cleanup.win script.
| 
| - what are the instructions to perform such a source install?
| - I assume one still needs MiKTeX -- is that right?
| - is the source install done from a tar.gz (in which case one would
| need tar to create it) or directly from the source directory tree?

You may want to stick this 

      http://developer.r-project.org/blosxom.cgi/R-devel

into your RSS reader so that you get daily summaries of changes.  

I don't follow this too religiously (as I typically only built r-devel once we have
alpha/beta/rc candidates) but even I am aware that 

      a) dynamic .Rd conversion at runtime, so Miktex may no longer be needed
    
      b) untgz.exe on Windows to read (compressed) tarballs

Dirk
#
Thanks. Perhaps someone in the core group can
still provide explicit information on how to install such
a package.
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
#
On Sep 17, 2009, at 12:43 , Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

            
R CMD INSTALL

(see R --help and it has been *the* way to install packages for quite  
a while so I'm not sure how more explicit we have to make it...)

Cheers,
Simon
#
Note that that is not currently the recommended way.

Also, what comes after INSTALL? The source .tar.gz name?
The pathname to the source directory?

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Simon Urbanek
<simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:
#
On Sep 17, 2009, at 16:09 , Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

            
Now that would be a surprise to me - to quote R-admin: 6.3.1: "R CMD  
INSTALL works in Windows to install source packages if you have the  
source-code package files".
R CMD INSTALL --help

Usage: R CMD INSTALL [options] pkgs

Install the add-on packages specified by pkgs.  The elements of pkgs can
be relative or absolute paths to directories with the package (bundle)
sources, or to gzipped package 'tar' archives.  The library tree
[...]

Cheers,
S
#
Maybe on other platforms but on Windows
help does not get linked properly with all
variations.

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 4:27 PM, Simon Urbanek
<simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:
#
On 17/09/2009 4:40 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
I think you are thinking of building binaries, not installing packages. 
    Generally the only variation we advise against is

R CMD build --binary

Everything else should work fine, as far as I know.

Duncan Murdoch
#
On 17/09/2009 5:55 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
And I forgot to add:  the way HTML help is handled in the upcoming 
2.10.0 is different, so I suspect R CMD build --binary will work.  I 
haven't tested it though...

Duncan Murdoch
#
Does that mean that

   Rcmd INSTALL --binary myPackage/

is still ok or should one use:

   Rcmd INSTALL myPackage/

without --binary and is this advice the same with and without Rtools?

Also, as there is potential confusion here could the combinations of flags
that are not recommended result in a warning? In the latter case at least
one knows right off that its not the thing to do and can immediately abort
and try something else if they don't want to suffer the consequences of
bad help linking.
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
#
Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
No, that has never worked.  Please follow Simon's advice, and read the 
manual.

Duncan Murdoch
#
I meant to write:

Rcmd INSTALL --build myPackage/

vs.

Rcmd INSTALL myPackage/

You, yourself, have mentioned the problem of linking help
pages on r-devel within the last few months:

http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/e6/devel/09/05/1721.html

and now that this is all changing it would be helpful to have comments
on what now works best on Windows with the new change.
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:32 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
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On 17/09/2009 7:47 PM, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
More recently than that.  This is the problem I was referring to in the 
messages you quote below.
Why don't you try the new system, and report on what goes wrong?  There 
is still time to fix it, so writing advice on what doesn't work seems a 
little premature.

Duncan Murdoch
#
The software and manuals are not yet in readily accessible
form on CRAN based on the date of the feature and I would
prefer not to have to build it myself when any day now it will
be there automatically anyways.

Also, I was hoping to avoid a frustrating session of trial and error
when surely someone in the core team already knows the likely
answer. Building a package takes time and repeatedly trying it
with different flags is time consuming.

We are only discussing one line of code:

  R CMD ...something...
On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 8:09 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote: