I have been mulling over an idea I had meant to flesh out with a prototype
but haven't gotten around to. So here it goes in the abstract without
working code:
What: Extend 'R CMD INSTALL' to also work on sources that are not strictly
CRAN packages
Why: 'R CMD INSTALL' is very good and very successful for CRAN packages. It
has solved most issues related to configure, make, ... etc by relying
on pre-computed and stored values.
CRAN is also very good as a mirror network to distribute content that
is easy to obtain by useRs.
So there are cases where I'd like to use CRAN / R CMD INSTALL to work
on non-package code. Two case are
i) littler which is easy to 'configure; make; make install' but
would want to live in $PREFIX/bin -- and I need to copy it there
ii) RCpp which is a library / glue code making live easier for C++
code to interface with R; also easy to configure but I'd then
libRcpp.{so,a} to be in $PREFIX/bin -- and I need to copy it
there
How: Similar to 'cleanup' we could have a script 'postinstall' in the
top-level directory, and if present, R would execute it.
As I'm the one with the itch, I'd be happy to work on code towards
implementing this -- but before I go overboard with it, I'd love to hear
comments, suggestions, questions, ... It is worthwhile? Is it feasible?
What did I overlook?
Thanks, Dirk
--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.
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