On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, Simon Urbanek wrote:

On Nov 13, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Tony Plate wrote:

Thanks for the response.

Are the problems with versioned installs fundamental, or are they just a case of incomplete implementation and rough edges?
If the latter, would fixes be considered?

I ask because we would find versioned installs very useful in maintaining stable production systems, each of which might run with different versions of various packages, while making it easy to continually develop and refine our packages. As a point of info, our primary use for versioning would be with our own packages, so we could probably get away without using versioned installs for base or contributed packages.


I find it more useful to work with multiple library paths (.libPaths()) than versioning packages in the above scenario. We usually maintain "stable" package library which is individually overridden by additional paths added by the user (e.g. developer library for testing) and/or subsystems. The override can also be revertive, i.e. a subsystem is free to use older packages in its library than the stable library when desired.

So do I. If you have versioned installs, the highest version will be chosen unless you specify otherwise, and there is no way to specify a version in common mechanisms like Depends:, Imports: in the DESCRIPTION file and imports()/importsFrom() in the namespace. Even if a package uses requires(), you can only specify a particular version, not a range of versions. So using different library trees is a much more general mechanism.

As far as I understand, the main point of versioned installs was to be able to load different versions of a package in the same R session, so packages A and B could depend on different versions of package C. As namespaces are not versioned, this cannot be done with packages with namespaces (there are other issues too). We've known that for a long time, and no one has been motivated to fix it (and it would need extensive changes). It is way beyond anything we would accept non-R-core patches for.

It would be possible to fix up the lack of implementation of versioned installs on Windows (which are much more extensive than in this bug report). But given that the lack has been there for several years and no user seems to have noticed it, it seems a waste of effort to do so. The plan is to move INSTALL on both Unix and Windows to a common R script, and that is unlikely to support versioned installs.

There are on-going discussions in R-core, but the likely outcome is to deprecate versioned installs in the near future.


Cheers,
S


However, if the problems with versioned installs are not amenable to the kinds of fixes that users can contribute, then I guess we should look for a different approach.

Suggestions and comments are welcome! Do many people use versioned installs?

-- Tony Plate (coworker of Lars @ blackmesacapital.com)

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
Installing versioned packages is not supported with namespaces. I have suggested from time to time that versioned installs be removed because of this and other known issues, and recommend that you do not attempt to use them.

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Full_Name: Lars Hansen
Version: 2.8.0
OS: Windows XP Pro x64 SP2
Submission from: (NULL) (71.39.177.36)


Hi,

I have run into a problem using "R CMD INSTALL" with the
"--with-package-versions" option under Windows. It is a bit obscure, which could
explain why other people have not run into it.

We happen to have two packages with almost the same name. One name is a subset of the other. The names are "RtTests" and "RtTestsEG1". I have no problem installing "RtTests" and many other packages, but run into problems installing "RtTestsEG1". The "RtTestsEG1" package happens to be a simple example of how to use the "RtTests" package, so it depends on "RtTests" (which is probably the
problem).

OK, so this is what happens when I attempt to install "RtTestsEG1":

$ R CMD INSTALL --with-package-versions --library=$R_LIBS RtTestsEG1

installing RtTestsEG1 package

---------- Making package RtTestsEG1 ------------
adding build stamp to DESCRIPTION
installing R files
preparing package RtTestsEG1 for lazy loading
Loading required package: RtTests
... [lost of lines removed]
Loading required package: RtTests
Error: evaluation nested too deeply: infinite recursion /
options(expressions=)?
Execution halted
make[2]: *** [lazyload] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make: *** [pkg-RtTestsEG1] Error 2
*** Installation of RtTestsEG1 failed ***

After some digging in the Windows makefiles, I found out that changing the
locale from "C" to "us" in the "lazyload" target of
$R_HOME/src/gnuwin32/MakePkg, i.e. using "LC_ALL=us" instead of "LC_ALL=C", solves the infinite recursion problem and give an useful message. It still fails
but now says:

Loading required package: RtTests
Warning: S3 methods 'summary.RtTestSetResults', 'print.RtTestSetResults',
'print.RtTestSetResults.summary' were declared in NAMESPACE but not found
Error in namespaceExport(ns, exports) :
undefined exports: parseTranscriptFile, compareTranscriptAndOutput
Error: package 'RtTests' could not be loaded
Execution halted

It is true that RtTests declares the various functions in its name space, but
why can they suddenly not be found? If I load RtTests by itself, i.e.
library(RtTests), there is no problem.

I happen to have all this working under Linux, so I tracked down the difference.
Turns out that under Linux the equivalent to the "lazyload" target is in
"/usr/lib/R/bin/INSTALL" and the difference is in the argument passed to
"tools:::makeLazyLoading". Under Linux the full package name with version number
is used, i.e. "RtTests_0.1-1". Windows just uses "RtTests".

So I managed to fix the problem by making Windows use the full package name in
the "lazyload" target. I replaced
tools:::makeLazyLoading(\"$(PKG)\"
with
tools:::makeLazyLoading(\"$(notdir $(DPKG))\"

If I now reinstall "RtTests", I can finally install "RtTestsEG1".

I must confess, that I do not fully understand exactly what it takes to
reproduce this problem. I am guessing that all it takes is a package depending on a versioned package. Maybe the similarity in names introduces a problem because of partial matching. I am guessing that has nothing to do with it.

To sum up the report. I see two problems:

1) LC_ALL=C causes infinite recursion. It is as if the C locale does not work under Windows. I do not know what the fix is. It is used many places in install scripts and makefiles. Fixing it in the "lazyload" target is not enough. Even with my change I still get "infinite recursion" and no error message if I try to
install "RtTestsEG1" without first installing "RtTests".

2) "makeLazyLoading()" in "lazyload" target needs to be called with full package name with embedded version number. I think this is bug under Windows and my fix
takes care of it.

It took some time to figure this out. I am hoping this report will save other people time. I am note sure if I succeeded in describing the problem clearly.
Please do not hesitate to ask for clarification.

Thanks,
Lars Hansen

P.S.
sessionInfo()
R version 2.8.0 Patched (2008-10-22 r46776)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
States.1252;LC_MONETARY=English_United
States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base

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--
Brian D. Ripley,                  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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

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