From gregor.gorjanc at bfro.uni-lj.si  Mon Apr 16 16:16:50 2007
From: gregor.gorjanc at bfro.uni-lj.si (Gregor Gorjanc)
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:16:50 +0200
Subject: [Rd] Sweave.sh shell script on CRAN
In-Reply-To: <462381EF.2050009@stats.uwo.ca>
References: <46235791.6080308@bfro.uni-lj.si> <46235CB6.3050201@stats.uwo.ca>
	<462363B1.7000406@bfro.uni-lj.si> <462381EF.2050009@stats.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <46238552.1000602@bfro.uni-lj.si>

Duncan Murdoch wrote:
...
>> Maybe I got this totally wrong. Say someone who uses Windows finds R and
>> installs it via setup file. Can he/she launch the folowing without
>> having Perl and/or sh.exe?
>>
>> R CMD script whateverOption
> 
> No.  Installing a binary package has a pure R implementation so it
> doesn't need R CMD, but most of the capabilities of R CMD are not
> available with a basic R install.
> 
> There are two reasons for this.  One is that the extra tools that are
> needed take up a lot of space, so they would make the setup file really
> huge.  That's an issue of less importance these days than in the past.
> 
> Another issue that is still important is that not all the tools needed
> have licenses compatible with redistribution:  in particular ActiveState
> Perl and the Microsoft Help Workshop.  There are other Perl
> implementations, but in the past Brian Ripley found that they didn't
> work.  I don't know if that's still true.  (In fact, I don't know if the
> licenses still limit redistribution.)


OK. Thank you for this explanation. I can not live without unix shell
and therefore never noticed that under Windows say R CMD INSTALL or
other R CMD scripts do not work without sh.exe (and/or Perl).

Gregor



[Rd] Sweave.sh shell script on CRAN
Gregor Gorjanc