[Rd] Building a custom Windows installer

[Prof Brian Ripley]

John,

It is not clear to me what you actually did (and I am also assuming 
this is 32-bit R), but I surmise that you did not build R in your 
source directory.  One of the first steps in doing so is to make 
src/gnuwin32/MkRules. (You are also likely to need to customize the 
file, possibly via a MkRules.local, to set ISDIR.)

I've done a quick check, and in R 2.11.x AFAICS all that is needed is

cd R_SOURCES/src/gnuwin32
make MkRules
cd installer
make myR IMAGEDIR=e:/temp/R-2.11.1 MDISDI=1

However, in 2.12.0 you will need to make R completely in the sources, 
as R is used for scripting.

Brian

On Tue, 13 Jul 2010, John Fox wrote:

> Dear r-devel list members,
>
> It's been several years since I last built a custom Windows installer for R,
> and despite my notes and the instructions in Sections 3.1.7 and D.4 of the R
> Installation and Administration Manual, I've run into a problem, receiving
> the following error message:
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>make myR IMAGEDIR=c:/temp/R-2.11.1
> MDISDI=1
> Makefile:3: ../MkRules: No such file or directory
> make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> make: ../fixed/rwver.pl: Command not found
> make: *** No rule to make target `../MkRules'.  Stop.
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> My path looks like this:
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>set path
> Path=c:\Rtools\bin;c:\Rtools\perl\bin;c:\Rtools\MinGW\bin;C:\Program
> Files\Commo
> n Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live;C:\GTK\bin;C:\Program
> Files\Insightful\spl
> us80\;C:\Program Files\ActiveState Komodo Edit
> 4\;.;c:\R\R-2.11.1\bin;C:\progra~
> 1\miktex~1.7\miktex\bin;c:\progra~1\htmlhe~1;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;
> C:\W
> indows\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Roxio
> Shared\DLLShared\;C:\Pr
> ogram Files\GnuWin32\bin;C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion;C:\Program
> Files\
> MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin;C:\Program Files\SAS\Shared
> Files\Formats;C:\Program
> Files\TortoiseSVN\bin;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program
> Fil
> es\Smart Projects\IsoBuster;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
> 2.7\miktex\bin\;C:\Program F
> iles\QuickTime\QTSystem\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
> Shared\Windows
> Live;C:\Program Files\SSH Communications Security\SSH Secure
> Shell;C:\Program Fi
> les\Bibtex2html;C:\Graphviz2.20\bin
> PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> The directory c:/temp/R-2.11.1 contains a complete customized installation
> of R, while C:\R\src\R-2.11.1 contains the unpacked R sources. This is on a
> Windows Vista system. I've updated Rtools to version 2.11.  I can supply
> more information, but I'm not sure what's relevant.
>
> I don't think that I should have to place a MkRules file in the gnuwin32
> directory, but I tried copying each the MkRules.dist and MkRules.rules files
> there in turn to MkRules. Neither worked; I apparently got farther copying
> MkRules.rules to MkRules, but eventually got another error:
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> C:\R\src\R-2.11.1\src\gnuwin32\installer>make myR IMAGEDIR=c:/temp/R-2.11.1
> MDISDI=1
> echo "make.packages.html(.Library)" | c:/temp/R-2.11.1/bin/rterm --vanilla
> --sla
> ve LC_COLLATE=C
> Making packages.html ... done
> adding MD5 checksums
> perl JRins.pl R-2.11.1 c:/temp/R-2.11.1 1 1 0 R-core
> "/iscc" R.iss > myR.log
> /iscc: not found
> make: *** [myR] Error 127
>
> ----------- snip -----------
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> John
>
> --------------------------------
> John Fox
> Senator William McMaster
>  Professor of Social Statistics
> Department of Sociology
> McMaster University
> Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
> web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
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