Windows versus Unix packages in CRAN (Was Re: [R] Rmetrics)

[Andrew Criswell]

Hello all:

On my linux platform, I ran the commands,

mkdir fBasics
unzip fBasics.zip -d fBasics
rm fBasics/src/*.o
R CMD check fBasics

That was 3 minutes. Next, I copied the files contained in 
fBasics.Rcheck/fBasics to the R library.

 > library(fBasics)

fBasics:    Markets, Basic Statistics, Date and TimeError in 
try(winMenuAdd("Rmetrics")) : couldn't find function "winMenuAdd"
 >

So, how do I get it to work "with no problems" in Linux??

Thanks,
Andrew

Janusz Kawczak wrote:

>And it seems that this vicious circle continues forever. Before
>posting these kind of messages can you please read the INSTRUCTIONS.
>fBasics_190.10051.zip is a COMPILED version of the package, not
>a source as you claim to be!
>
>It works with no problems; well, at least under Linux.
>
>Janusz.
>
>"Richard A. O'Keefe" wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>>        mkdir fBasics
>>        unzip fBasics.zip -d fBasics
>>        rm fBasics/src/*.o
>>        R CMD check fBasics
>>
>>        and that took me about 3 minutes.
>>
>>Now me, I just did
>>
>>        unzip -a fBasics_190.10051.zip
>>        R CMD INSTALL fBasics
>>        rm -rf fBasics
>>
>>in a naive and trusting manner.  It took me considerably longer than 3
>>minutes to learn that this was what I should do, and when I did learn,
>>I wondered "if it's this simple, why can't R CMD INSTALL do it?"
>>
>>Now I discover that it isn't that simple.  The installation apparently
>>went smoothly.  This is R, right?  Never occurred to me that there might
>>be problems.
>>
>>Now, B-G--R!  It turns out that core stuff is supplied as .dll files,
>>which of course my UltraSPARC can do nothing with.
>>
>>The author of the Rmetrics code has a perfect right to provide his code
>>in any form he wants under any conditions he wants (subject to GPL &c).
>>In particular, if he wants to provide a distribution which only works under
>>Windows, that's perfectly OK.
>>
>>**BUT** when a distribution is peculiar to one operating system, that really
>>should be highlighted in big bold letters:  this is a WINDOWS BINARY
>>version, so that people who can't use Windows .DLL files are spared a day
>>of trying to figure out how to unpack and of doing an installation which
>>reports no errors at all and of them finding that things do not work.
>>
>>There is *NOTHING* on http://www.itp.phys.ethz.ch/econophysics/R/download.htm
>>that says "Windows only".  Click on "I accept"and the page you arrive at has
>>nothing in the text anywhere that says "Windows only" or "what to do if not
>>Windows".  (The http://.../R/bin/windows/contrib/1.9 address of the page
>>was, in retrospect, a big clue, sigh.)
>>
>>        It would of course be nice if the developers had done
>>
>>        R CMD check fBasics
>>
>>But if you go into the Sources directory, which I suppose you must have,
>>for each of {fBasics,fExtremes,fOptions,fSeries} there is an
>>xxx-00check.log.txt, so they _did_ run R CMD check.
>>
>>        and sorted out the errors, then
>>        R CMD build fBasics
>>
>>Those same check logs show errors (like failure to build .dvi files).
>>
>>Will it work if I download the Sources packages?
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>>https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>    
>>
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>
>
>
>  
>