[R] How to rebuild an R package that has been removed from CRAN?

David Winsemius dwinsemius at comcast.net
Tue Aug 20 03:05:37 CEST 2013


On Aug 19, 2013, at 5:07 PM, Shang Zuofeng wrote:

> So this is an alternative method. The package can be installed from source() rather than rebuilt. Although the warnings exist, the package itself may still be useful. Can you let me know how to installed from source?
> 
Quite a bit of effort has gon e into the manuals shipped with every installation of R. You should have gotten a copy of this;

http://www.cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html


> Thanks a lot!
> Zuofeng
> 
> 
> 2013/8/19 David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
> 
> On Aug 19, 2013, at 4:12 PM, Uwe Ligges wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 20.08.2013 01:06, Daniel Nordlund wrote:
> >> The file you had, assist_3.1.2.tar.gz, was not a Windows binary zip file.  It was a source tarball.  That kind of file needs to be built and installed differently.  In order to do that, you need to have all the tools necessary for building packages.  This package does not have just pure R code in it, but it has code that needs compiling.  You need to determine why the package was removed from CRAN.  It may no longer work with current versions of R.  You probably need to contact the package maintainer to resolve this problem.  Sorry I can't provide more help.
> >
> >
> > .... and possible reasons for package archivals on CRAN are unresponsive maintainers of packages that do not pass the checks without problems any more.
> 
> I have a copy of 'assist' installed (for some mysterious reason my GUI package installer was able to find a binary copy for R 3.0.1 on my regular UC Berkeley CRAN repos):
> 
> > maintainer("assist")
> [1] "Chunlei Ke <chunlei_ke at yahoo.com>"
> 
> From the description file:
> 
> Package: assist
> Version: 3.1.2
> Title: A Suite of S-Plus Functions Implementing Smoothing Splines
> 
> Depends: R (>= 1.7.0), nlme
> 
> URL: http://www.pstat.ucsb.edu/faculty/yuedong/software.html
> Packaged: 2013-03-12 15:29:39 UTC; ripley
> Repository: CRAN
> Date/Publication: 2013-03-12 16:30:20
> NeedsCompilation: yes
> Built: R 3.0.0; x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0; 2013-03-16 08:53:21 UTC; unix
> Archs: assist.so.dSYM
> 
> 
> I also installed from source and here are the warning messages:
> 
> 
> gfortran-4.2 -arch x86_64   -fPIC  -g -O2  -c rkpk1.f -o rkpk1.o
> rkpk1.f:1972.72:
> 
>    10 ASSIGN 30 TO NEXT
>                                                                        1
> Warning: Obsolete: ASSIGN statement at (1)
> rkpk1.f:1977.19:
> 
>    20    GO TO NEXT,(30, 50, 70, 110)
>                   1
> Warning: Obsolete: Assigned GOTO statement at (1)
> rkpk1.f:1979.72:
> 
>       ASSIGN 50 TO NEXT
>                                                                        1
> Warning: Obsolete: ASSIGN statement at (1)
> rkpk1.f:1988.72:
> 
>       ASSIGN 70 TO NEXT
>                                                                        1
> Warning: Obsolete: ASSIGN statement at (1)
> rkpk1.f:1994.72:
> 
>       ASSIGN 110 TO NEXT
>                                                                        1
> Warning: Obsolete: ASSIGN statement at (1)
> 
> -------------------------
> Good luck;
> 
> David.
> 
> 
> >
> > Best,
> > Uwe Ligges
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Dan
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Daniel Nordlund
> >>
> >> Bothell, WA USA
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>   _____
> >>
> >> From: Shang Zuofeng [mailto:zuofengshang at gmail.com]
> >> Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 2:16 PM
> >> To: Daniel Nordlund
> >> Cc: r-help at r-project.org
> >> Subject: Re: [R] How to rebuild an R package that has been removed from CRAN?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks, Dan!
> >>
> >> The package is "assist" which can be downloaded from the following link:
> >>
> >> http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/assist/
> >>
> >> The one I chose was assist_3.1.2.tar.gz
> >>
> >> I have changed this file to .zip and installed it from local directory through R. However, this method is still not working.
> >>
> >> Thanks a lot for your kind help!
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >>
> >> Zuofeng
> >>
> >> 2013/8/19 Daniel Nordlund <djnordlund at frontier.com>
> >>
> >>> -----Original Message-----
> >>> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
> >>> On Behalf Of Shang Zuofeng
> >>> Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 1:26 PM
> >>> To: r-help at r-project.org
> >>> Subject: [R] How to rebuild an R package that has been removed from CRAN?
> >>>
> >>> Dear All,
> >>>
> >>> My project requires the use of a specific R package. However, this R
> >>> package has been removed from CRAN. But its older version can be found.
> >>> Unfortunately, the older version cannot be used. The thing is, after I
> >>> downloaded the older version and unzip it into the library folder of  R,
> >>> and I input library("package name"), it says that the package "is not a
> >>> valid installed package".
> >>>
> >>> After an intensive search, I found a possible solution: to rebuild this R
> >>> package so that it may work properly. I have no idea how to make this
> >>> achieved because of my little experience on rebuilding an R package.
> >>>
> >>> I highly appreciate your help.
> >>>
> >>> Sincere thanks.
> >>> Zuofeng
> >>>
> >>
> >> Well, you haven't told us enough to let us help you.  Given that you have a zip file, I will assume for the moment that you are using some variant of MS Windows.  I don't think you want to unzip that file directly.  I think you want open R, go to the packages menu and choose install package from  local zip file.  Whether that will work depends on your version of R, your OS, the requirements of the package, why it was removed from CRAN, and a host of other things.  If you want more detailed help, you need to provide the "at a minimum" info requested in the posting guide.  It would also help if you told us what package you are trying to install.
> >>
> >> Dan
> >>
> >> Daniel Nordlund
> >> Bothell, WA USA
> >>
> 
> David Winsemius
> Alameda, CA, USA
> 
> 

David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA



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