From ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk  Fri May 15 15:53:49 2009
From: ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian Ripley)
Date: Fri, 15 May 2009 14:53:49 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Rd] Problem building (binary) packages for Windows
In-Reply-To: <4A0D5BAD.9050608@web.de>
References: <4A0D5BAD.9050608@web.de>
Message-ID: <alpine.OSX.1.00.0905151445270.59770@tystie.local>

That version of R-devel is not current, so please update it.  I think 
it might have been in an interval where we tried out verious fixes for 
building bundles and some of them broke other things.

In general if you use R-devel or R-patched you need to update before 
reporting any difficulties.  'Under development' needs to be taken 
seriously.

On Fri, 15 May 2009, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am having a problem building binary packages for
> Windows recently.
>
> Normally, I use the "Murdoch-Sutherland" tool set,
>       http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/
> just build source packages by
>       R CMD build <pkgname>
> and install these with
>       R CMD INSTALL <pkgname>
>
> But now, for someone without having this tool set installed,
> under Win XP, with R-2.10dev (details below), I tried
> building a binary version with
>       R CMD build --binary <pkgname>
> which used to work for me until recently (unfortunately I
> cannot specify "recently" here...)
>
> Trying to install the created .zip file with
>       utils:::menuInstallLocal()
>
> I get an error message
> "
> package 'distr' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
> Error in unpackPkg(pkgs[i], pkgnames[i], lib) :
>  malformed bundle DESCRIPTION file, no Contains field
> "
>
> Now AFAICS I have not tried to build a bundle ...
>
> Searching the help archives, I found a posting by Uwe Ligges,
>       http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.r.general/64574/
> saying that
>       R CMD INSTALL --build
> was preferable to
>       R CMD build --binary
> --- in which respect? Would this avoid the error message?

That's rather old as well: now the second calls the first on Windows. 
What may matter is whether you specify -l on R CMD INSTALL --build (R 
CMD build --binary does), as installing into the main library does a 
better job of resolving HTML cross links.

So the advice is to use R CMD INSTALL --build *and* install into the 
main library (or the library where you install all your add-on 
packages).

> So far I have not come across this error message, and
> packages I built with
>       R CMD build --binary
> installed correctly with
>       utils:::menuInstallLocal()
>
> Actually, the corresponding zip-file containes
> a second DESCRIPTION file in the top folder, like a
> bundle, which I think is the culpit, and after
> deleting this installation worked out fine.
>
> Could you please check what caused this second
> DESCRIPTION file to be generated?
>
> Any suggestions welcome,
>
> Best, Peter
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> platform       i386-pc-mingw32
>
> arch           i386
>
> os             mingw32
>
> system         i386, mingw32
>
> status         Under development (unstable)
>
> major          2
>
> minor          10.0
>
> year           2009
>
> month          04
>
> day            26
>
> svn rev        48404
>
> language       R
>
> version.string R version 2.10.0 Under development (unstable) (2009-04-26
> r48404)
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



[Rd] Problem building (binary) packages for Windows
Prof Brian Ripley