From ggrothendieck at gmail.com  Wed Jul  6 23:42:49 2005
From: ggrothendieck at gmail.com (Gabor Grothendieck)
Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 17:42:49 -0400
Subject: [Rd] .Rbuildignore {was: ... upgrading an R (WINDOWS)
	installation ..}
In-Reply-To: <42CC4DAD.1000100@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
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	<17099.55467.732587.886792@stat.math.ethz.ch>
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	<42CC402D.5010307@statistik.uni-dortmund.de>
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Message-ID: <971536df0507061442c2eab06@mail.gmail.com>

On 7/6/05, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
> 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.
> 


The desirable philosophy when it comes to portability is that software
works in the way the host system works, not in a new way that the
software defines for itself for all systems.  The problems I and the
cited poster had in this regard well illustrate the problem with the current
approach.



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