From ggrothendieck at gmail.com  Wed Jul  6 23:14:31 2005
From: ggrothendieck at gmail.com (Gabor Grothendieck)
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 17:14:31 -0400
Subject: [Rd] .Rbuildignore {was: ... upgrading an R (WINDOWS)
	installation ..}
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Message-ID: <971536df050706141429eeaa48@mail.gmail.com>

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 | *]]
...

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 ..}
Gabor Grothendieck