Package: r-base
Version: 2.2.1-2
Severity: normal
This bug can be considered to be
(1) incorrect handling of a user error, or
(2) incorrect documentation, or
(3) missing Debian documentation.
(Depending on one's mood, I suppose.)
Running download.packages("vcd") leads to
(a) a warning that it is going to attempt to write to /usr/local/lib/R,
which is not a directory to which Debian users normally
have write permission. Then, errors from lack of permission.
(b) Note that according to the R documentation, lib is a required
argument without a default, so an error should be reported even be
before a download is attempted.
(c) The resulting error message could be more helpful;
it could suggest a change to the lib argument or
perhaps other things.
So, if the intent is to have a default argument for lib,
it should be specified in help(install.packages);
if not, it should return an error.
If the intent is to install into /usr/local/lib/R on Linux
boxes, then the Debian package ought to
note somewhere (probably in /usr/share/doc/r-base/README.Debian)
that users need to be in group staff to be able to install
R packages to the default directories.
> install.packages("vcd")
Warning in install.packages("vcd") : argument 'lib' is missing: using
/usr/local/lib/R/site-library
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
trying URL 'http://cran.uk.r-project.org/src/contrib/vcd_0.9-7.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 771160 bytes
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 753Kb
mkdir: cannot create directory `/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/00LOCK':
Permission denied
ERROR: failed to lock directory '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library' for modifying
The downloaded packages are in
/tmp/RtmpCVx2nl/downloaded_packages
Warning messages:
1: installation of package 'vcd' had non-zero exit status in:
install.packages("vcd")
2: cannot create HTML package index in: tools:::unix.packages.html(.Library)
>
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.12-1-686
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Versions of packages r-base depends on:
ii r-base-core 2.2.1-2 GNU R core of statistical computin
ii r-recommended 2.2.1-2 GNU R collection of recommended pa
Versions of packages r-base recommends:
pn r-base-html <none> (no description available)
pn r-base-latex <none> (no description available)
-- no debconf information
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