(PR#6830) Re: [Rd] 'R CMD build' fails when there are spaces in the path (PR#6830)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Note that it *does* work under Windows (via mapping names to short names
without spaces), so we should take care not to break that (and I think
adding quotes will as the shell quoting rules appear to be are different).

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Kurt Hornik wrote:

> >>>>> ellis  writes:
> 
> > Full_Name: Byron Ellis
> > Version: R 1.9.0 (and 2.0.0)
> > OS: Linux (Redhat Fedora Core)
> > Submission from: (NULL) (140.247.241.197)
> 
> 
> > It appears that `R CMD build` cannot handle spaces in the path when
> > building packages for distribution. For instance:
> 
> > [ellis at net-78815 ~/Bayesian Networks]$ R CMD build bnsl
> > * checking for file 'bnsl/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
> > * preparing 'bnsl':
> > * cleaning src
> > * removing junk files
> > * building 'bnsl_0.0.1.tar.gz'
> > tar: Networks/bnsl_0.0.1.tar: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
> > tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> > tar: Networks/bnsl_0.0.1.tar: Not found in archive
> > tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
> > Error: cannot open file 'bnsl/DESCRIPTION' for reading
> > [ellis at net-78815 ~/Bayesian Networks]$ 
> 
> > Results in a file named "Bayesian" (that appears to be the
> > uncompressed tar file) in ~/. I suspect some missing quotes somewhere.
> 
> The problem definitely occurs when calling R CMD build from a dir whose
> file path contains white space.  Now in R CMD build we have
> 
> $ grep filepath build.in 
>         my $filepath = &file_path($startdir, $filename);
>             R_system("zip -r9X $filepath.zip $pkgs $topLevelFiles");
>             R_system("$tar chf $filepath $pkgs $topLevelFiles");
>             R_system("gzip -9f $filepath");
>         my $filepath = &file_path($startdir, $filename);
>         my $origfilepath = $filepath;
>             $filepath =~ s+^([A-Za-x]):+/cygdrive/\1+;
>         R_system("$tar chf $filepath $pkgname");
>         R_system("$tar xhf $filepath");
>         R_system("$tar chf $filepath $pkgname");
>         R_system("gzip -9f $origfilepath");
> 
> so in fact in none of the calls to R_system() with $filepath do we
> currently perform any kind of quoting or shell escaping.
> 
> A simple improvement would be quoting all filepaths in R_system() calls
> via \"...\" or '...'.  Unless someone has a better idea or wants to put
> in more effort ...

-- 
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