From edd at debian.org  Sat Jun 26 22:46:09 2004
From: edd at debian.org (Dirk Eddelbuettel)
Date: Sat Jun 26 22:46:17 2004
Subject: [Rd] Problem setting environment variable in R/zzz.R
Message-ID: <20040626204609.GA6901@sonny.eddelbuettel.com>


I am trying to get the Rmetrics.org component package fBasics by Diethelm
Wuertz into a Debian package. Thanks to a lot of work by Diethelm, it is
_almost_ there. It fails 'R CMD check' for me if I do not have the TZ
environment variable set [1], yet works fine as long as I set TZ.

I figured I could patch this in R/zzz.R and do 

    ## set a timezone if none found in environment variables or options()
    if (Sys.getenv("TZ")=="") {
      if (is.null(getOption("TZ"))) {
        cat("No timezone information found, using default of GMT\n")
        Sys.putenv("TZ"=="GMT")
      } else {
        cat("No timezone information found, applying option() value of",
            getOption("TZ"), "\n")
        Sys.putenv("TZ"==getOption("TZ"))
      }
    }

right before   library.dynam("fBasics", pkg, lib)  concludes .First.lib().

Now, even with that little patch, the R CMD check still fails.  Which means
that the package could fail CRAN tests unless CRAN has TZ set. That is a bit
of a gamble I'd rather avoid.

What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks,  Dirk


[1] There is a bit of a Debian tradition to, if in doubt, cover things via
    a configuration file in /etc rather than an environment variable. I got
    rather used to that, and like living without env.vars.

-- 
"Cheney has the mouth of a sailor, which is odd for someone who did 
everything he could to stay out of the Navy," one observer said.
          -- Andy Borowitz, http://borowitzreport.com, 26 June 2004


[Rd] Problem setting environment variable in R/zzz.R
Dirk Eddelbuettel