Homemade packages.
Dear Brian: Thanks for your response to my posting to the r-help list.
You wrote:
You shouldn't be installing into `.' You install packages into a *library*
(a) Installing into `.' seemed to work fine under 1.3.1. (b) What then, is a ``library''? I took ``library'' to mean a directory containing a number of subdirectories, each of which constituted a package. So when I am located in ~rolf/Rlib --- which is what I want to be my ``personal library'' --- and I install into `.' then I ***am*** installing into a library, since `.' ***is*** a library. If the foregoing does not make sense, then I am clearly misunderstanding the nature of the library/packages structure. And if this is indeed the case, then I think the documentation should be clarified. The documentation currently says A package consists of a subdirectory containing the files DESCRIPTION and INDEX, and the subdirectories R, data, demo, exec, inst, man, src, and tests (some of which can be missing). and To install into the library tree `lib', use `R CMD INSTALL -l lib pkgs'. Both `lib' and the elements of `pkgs' may be absolute or relative path names. There appears to me to no special requirements for the directory `lib' and in particular nothing saying that `lib' cannot be the current working directory.
and the default (R_HOME/library if R_LIBS is unset) is normally sufficient.
I am working on a multi-user system, not on a PC. I am not working as root, and I am trying to install a package in a ***personal*** library, NOT in a generally available ``system'' library.
Yes, if you install onto the sources it will now wipe out what it thinks of as older and unnecessary files, and that is new in 1.4.0.
That seems to me to be at the very least a dangerous design flaw. To destroy code without warning and without saving a back-up --- even if the user is doing something stupid (and given that what I was doing used to work in version 1.3.1 I don't think it was all ***that*** stupid) --- is asking for trouble. I had to re-write a good bit of code and documentation because of this behaviour. cheers, Rolf -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._