On 6/22/06, Duncan Murdoch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jay Emerson wrote: > > At the encouragement of many at UseR, I'm trying to build my first real > > package. I have no C/Fortran code, just plain old R code, so it should be > > rocket science. On a Linux box, I used package.skeleton() to create a basic > > package containing just one "hello world" type of function. I edited the > > DESCRIPTION file, changin the package name appropriately. I edited the > > hello.Rd file. Upon running R CMD check hello, the only warning had to do > > with the fact that src/ was empty (obviously I had no source in such a > > simple package). I doubt this is a problem. > > > > I was able to install and use the package successfully on the Linux system > > from the .tar.gz file, so far so good! Next, on to Windows, where the > > problem arose: > > > > I created a zip file from inside the package directory: zip -r ../hello.zip > > ./* > > > > > Which package directory, the source or the installed copy? I think this > might work in the installed copy, but would not work on the source. > It's not the documented way to build a binary zip, though. > > When I moved this to my Windows machine and tried to install the package, I > > received the following error: > > > > > >> utils:::menuInstallLocal() > >> > > Error in unpackPkg(pkgs[i], pkgnames[i], lib, installWithVers) : > > malformed bundle DESCRIPTION file, no Contains field > > > > I only found one mention of this in my Google search, with no reply to the > > thread. The Contains field appears to be used for bundles, but I'm trying > > to create a package, not a bundle. This leads me to believe that a simple > > zipping of the package directory structure is not the correct format for > > Windows. > > > > Needless to say, there appears to be wide agreement that making packages > > requires precision, but fundamentally a package should (as described in the > > documentation) just be a collection of files and folders organized a certain > > way. If someone could point me to documentation I may have missed that > > explains this, I would be grateful. > > > > I think the "organized in a certain way" part is actually important. > Using R CMD install --build is the documented way to achieve this. It's > not trivial to do this on Windows, because you need to set up a build > environment first, but it's not horribly difficult. > > Duncan Murdoch > > Regards, > > > > Jay
One idea that occurred to me in reading this would be to have a server that one can send a package to and get back a Windows build to eliminate having to set up a development environment. Not sure if this is feasible, particularly security aspects, but if it were it would open up package building on Windows to a larger audience. ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
