Replying to myself again, I've now figured out how to build all the help files, including 00Index.html, without actually building the package. The point is to construct a complete list of all html help files for searching.
The one thing I cannot figure out is how to build the index of all packages which (for me) is at /usr/share/doc/R-2.9.0/html/packages.html Apparently this requires something other than DESCRIPTION and 00Index.html files in each package, which is all I have. Here is the script: #!/bin/bash # makes indexable help files for R packages, including pdf vignettes # usage inst.bat "[files]" --- quotes needed for wildcards like "*.tar.gz" for PKG in `ls $1` do tar xfz $PKG PK=`echo $PKG | /bin/sed -e 's/.tar.gz//' | cut -d"_" -f1` echo $PK mkdir -pv /usr/lib/R/library/$PK mkdir -pv /usr/lib/R/library/$PK/html # copy description (which contains version number) cp $PK/DESCRIPTION /usr/lib/R/library/$PK # move vignettes if present if [ -d $PK/inst/doc ]; then mkdir -pv /usr/lib/R/library/$PK/doc cp $PK/inst/doc/* /usr/lib/R/library/$PK/doc fi # make html files R CMD perl /usr/share/R/perl/build-help.pl --html /home/baron/$PK /usr/lib/R/library/ # make indices Rscript --vanilla -e "tools:::.writePkgIndices('$PK','/usr/lib/R/library/$PK')" rm -rf $PK done # try to build package list, doesn't work # Rscript --no-init-file --no-save -e "make.packages.html(packages=FALSE)" -- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.