R devel - Nov 2004 - wishlist: better error message in R CMD check

I was running R CMD check on Windows XP 2.0.1beta and 
got this:

Error in parse(file, n, text, prompt) : syntax error on 602

After a lot of aggravation I finally discovered that if I did
this:

copy *.R allofthem.R

and checked line 602 in allofthem.R that I could find the error.
I noticed that there are repeated references in the help archives
to this sort of error and how hard it is to locate it.  It 
certainly would be nice to tell the user which file the error
is in and to point to the original files, not some intermediate
file or if one must do it in terms of intermediate files to keep
the file around and tell the user which and where it is.

Gabor,

I guess is that you did not try to run R CMD INSTALL before R CMD check.  R
CMD check will try to install the package first (in pkg.Rcheck), and only if
that's successful would checks be done.

The installation process will concatenate all R files in R/ to a single file
and essentially source() that in upon package loading.  That's where you
would see the syntax error.  I believe the recommended way is to install the
package and play with that a bit first, before doing R CMD check.  You'd
find some problems are much easier to find that way (e.g., errors in
NAMESPACE).

Cheers,
Andy
> From: Gabor Grothendieck
> 
> I was running R CMD check on Windows XP 2.0.1beta and 
> got this:
> 
> Error in parse(file, n, text, prompt) : syntax error on 602
> 
> After a lot of aggravation I finally discovered that if I did
> this:
> 
> copy *.R allofthem.R
> 
> and checked line 602 in allofthem.R that I could find the error.
> I noticed that there are repeated references in the help archives
> to this sort of error and how hard it is to locate it.  It 
> certainly would be nice to tell the user which file the error
> is in and to point to the original files, not some intermediate
> file or if one must do it in terms of intermediate files to keep
> the file around and tell the user which and where it is.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 
>

On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> I was running R CMD check on Windows XP 2.0.1beta and
> got this:
>
> Error in parse(file, n, text, prompt) : syntax error on 602
>
> After a lot of aggravation I finally discovered that if I did
> this:
>
> copy *.R allofthem.R
>
> and checked line 602 in allofthem.R that I could find the error.
> I noticed that there are repeated references in the help archives
> to this sort of error and how hard it is to locate it.  It
> certainly would be nice to tell the user which file the error
> is in and to point to the original files, not some intermediate
> file or if one must do it in terms of intermediate files to keep
> the file around and tell the user which and where it is.
The intermediate file *is* kept around (at least for CMD check on a 
directory -- I haven't tried it on a tarball).  It is
  package.Rcheck/package/R/package

Telling the user where it is would be helpful, as you say.

 	-thomas