From ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de  Wed Jul  6 23:31:25 2005
From: ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de (Uwe Ligges)
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 23:31:25 +0200
Subject: [Rd] .Rbuildignore {was: ... upgrading an R (WINDOWS)
 installation ..}
In-Reply-To: <971536df050706141429eeaa48@mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <42CC4DAD.1000100@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:

> On 7/6/05, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
> 
>>Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 7/6/05, Martin Maechler <maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>>>>"Gabor" == Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>>   on Wed, 6 Jul 2005 08:24:49 -0400 writes:
>>>>
>>>>.......................
>>>>.......................
>>>>
>>>>  Gabor> I have cleaned up my batch files (somewhat) and posted them to
>>>>  Gabor> CRAN. See my recent post:
>>>>  Gabor> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-July/073400.html
>>>>
>>>>  Gabor> If any of this functionality could migrate to R
>>>>  Gabor> itself that would be great.
>>>>
>>>>  ........
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  Gabor> 2. Also if Rcmd CHECK and Rcmd INSTALL were to
>>>>  Gabor> process .Rbuildignore like Rcmd BUILD does then
>>>>  Gabor> makepkg.bat would not have to do a build first.
>>>>
>>>>No!  {We have been here before, and I had explained before that}
>>>>this is really undesired:  ".Rbuildignore" should contain what is
>>>>ignored by build, but not by "check".
>>>>It does make sense to have extra code and / or checks for 'R CMD check'
>>>>that I as package developer want to run, but that are
>>>>-- too time consuming
>>>>-- too platform specific
>>>>-- ......
>>>>to be run during the daily checks on CRAN (e.g.) /
>>>>to be run by others at all.
>>>>
>>>>{And BTW, AFAIK,  'Rcmd' is now `somewhat deprecated' in favor
>>>>of "R CMD" since the latter is portable }
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Martin
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I think its too heavy handed an approach.  This should be up to the package
>>>developer via a switch.  I like to put partially written code and other things
>>>not intended for distribution in .Rbuildignore and don't want them checked or
>>>installed until I move them out of .Rbuildignore.  That makes it
>>>possible to keep
>>>everything together.  Without this one must 1. keep them elsewhere
>>>(which I am considering as an alternate approach to what I do now although
>>>it would be a shame) or else 2. write batch files (which I have
>>>written for XP) to do
>>>a prebuild every time one does a check or install.
>>>
>>>One annoying aspect of R CMD is the requirement for capitalization.  Maybe
>>>that's ok on UNIX but on Windows one is used to using upper and lower
>>>case interchangeably.  Its also annoying to have to write two words instead of
>>>one for a frequently issued command.   At any rate I always call it through
>>
>>Gabor, honestly, this is nonsense.
>>
>>1. Do you expect that R also changes under Windows because you are used
>>to mix upper and lower case and want to say SUMMARY() or rowsums()?
>>2. Do you really thing it is annoying to type "R CMD" rather than
>>"Rcmd"? Hmm, anybody else has a space bar left for Gabor?
>>
>>Best,
>>Uwe
>>
>>
>>>my Rcmd.bat batch file so its not really an issue for me.
> 
> 
> It was claimed its portable and that is true in the strictest sense that it
> works on both UNIX and Windows but it would be even more
> desirable if it were not just portable but also worked the way the target
> system worked rather than just acting like a UNIX utility does
> on Windows.  Ideally it would work as other Windows utilities work,
> e.g. note that we run the following using upper and lower case and
> get the same result:
> 
> C:> net use ?
> The syntax of this command is:
> NET USE
> [devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
> ...
> 
> C:> NET USE ?
> The syntax of this command is:
> NET USE
> [devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
> ...

No! That something completely different: If Windows allows to use "net 
use" and "NET USE" even if only the latter is the documeted way, OK. 
These are, as you mentioned yourself, *Windows utilities* and you don't 
want to port this syntax.

But if you type "R cmd", it is no longer portable, and "Rcmd" for sure 
is not. "R CMD" is an R utility --- and R behaves case senstive.

Uwe Ligges



> A Windows user does not expect the case sensitive behaviour
> since just about all the software one uses does not work that way.
> I got tripped up by it myself and obviously others do too.  e.g. see
> this recent post:
> https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2005-June/073154.html
> 
> I was just pointing out this undesirable aspect.  It may be a small point
> but the sum of small inconsistencies can collectively amount to substantial
> difficulty and contribute to the feeling that software is hard to use.
> 
> On the other point, I may be spacebar-challenged but Rcmd does address 
> these points.



[Rd] .Rbuildignore {was: ... upgrading an R (WINDOWS) installation ..}
Uwe Ligges