From ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk  Tue Feb 26 13:37:14 2002
From: ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof Brian D Ripley)
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:37:14 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
Subject: [Rd] File permissions test during R CMD check
In-Reply-To: <20020226132011.GA21081@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.44.0202261332010.332-100000@tern.stats>

On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 26, 2002 at 09:05:13AM +0000, Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Kurt Hornik wrote:
> >
> > > >>>>> Dirk Eddelbuettel writes:
> > >
> > > > I (still) use RCS, and not CVS, for my own projects. R CMD check does
> > > > not like the 0444 file permissions on files check into RCS.
> > >
> > > > I conjecture that this stems from desire to have the installed files
> > > > in a state in which they can be edited, but I might be off base ... In
> > > > case my conjecture holds, would it be possible to relax the
> > > > restriction during R CMD check, but then install the files as 0644 ?
> > >
> > > Not as long as R CMD build takes what is in the source dirs.
> > >
> > > There are some comments about possible improvements to permission tests
> > > in the code of check, but in any case all files that are to be installed
> > > should be at least 644.  We could relax that for e.g. C source or
> > > headers, but not e.g. for DESCRIPTION.
>
> I also checked in the .R and .Rd files.
>
> > First comment: there is a --no-perms option to turn the check off.
>
> Sure, I use that here, but it doesn't buy me lunch as it is (presumably)
> not turned on at the archive guard's machine.
>
> > I don't think there is a problem with DESCRIPTION, since we make the
> > installed copy with cat and sed.  However, the data file and inst files are
> > copied and so might have permissions copied too, but the data files have
> > chmod 644 in (Unix) INSTALL.  The files in inst do need to be checked.
> > Installing read-only files makes updating packages a lot harder and would
> > break the current mechanisms for installing updates over existing copies.
>
> Right -- That is why I suggest to alter file perms/modes on /installation/
> not package creation.

and you omitted two paras of why I thought that was not the answer.
Briefly:

1) It's not clear we can alter perm/modes on installation on all OSes.
2) Users may need to modify the source files to get the package to install
(especially the C files).

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley@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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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[Rd] File permissions test during R CMD check
Prof Brian D Ripley