[Rd] cygwin and tar -- still?

[Jeff D. Hamann]

I've upgraded laptops and have put a new version of R on the new machine as 
well as the tools for building packages. I know R has required a 
"non-broken" version of tar for some time now and was hoping to not have to 
install any cygwin tools. Since building packages requires the use of MinGW 
and MSYS, why can't we simply use the tar that's part of msys?

After looking at the following results:

E:\conifers>rcmd build --binary rconifers
* checking for file 'rconifers/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* preparing 'rconifers':
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* cleaning src
* checking whether 'INDEX' is up-to-date ... NO
* use '--force' to overwrite the existing 'INDEX'
* removing junk files
tar: /cygdrive/E/conifers/rconifers_0.0-5.tar: Cannot open: No such file or 
directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: /cygdrive/E/conifers/rconifers_0.0-5.tar: Cannot open: No such file or 
directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Error: cannot open file 'rconifers/DESCRIPTION' for reading

E:\conifers>

I still don't understand why the cygwin tool is required. I'm just a mere 
simpleton and haven't spent the time required to become king-fu master with 
this particular minutiae. Could the script that builds the package be fixed? 
Is it broken? If it's not broken, what's with the cygdrive stuff? why does 
the entire path need to be there?

Is the tar that's in the tools.zip from 
http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/ any different than the one with 
MSYS?

Jeff.