R help - Apr 2024 - Building R-4,3,3 fails

? Mon, 8 Apr 2024 13:13:39 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> ?????:
> That thread is 8 years old and may no longer apply to TeXLive2024.
True, but the /usr/bin/texi2dvi from GNU Texinfo 6.8 (2021) on my
Debian Bookworm system still contains this error message:

  case $TEXI2DVI_USE_RECORDER in
    yes) set_aux_files_from_fls;;

    no)	set_aux_files_from_log;;

    yesmaybe)
      if check_recorder_support; then
        set_aux_files_from_fls
      elif check_openout_in_log_support; then
        set_aux_files_from_log
      else
        error 1 "TeX neither supports -recorder nor outputs \\openout lines
in its log file"
      fi

And even if the problem is somewhere else, the steps to debug it are
the same: use Sweave to obtain the *.tex file that fails to compile
using texi2pdf, then check what happens inside check_recorder_support
or check_openout_in_log_support to find out why. It's probably pdflatex
that fails, so we'll likely save some time by going straight for it.
> The error occurs when building R. Since R's not installed I cannot
> run it to build reshape.tex.
At this point in the build, R already exists, is quite operable and
even has all the recommended packages installed. The build system then
uses this freshly compiled R to run Sweave on the vignettes. Let me
break the build in a similar manner and see what happens:

sed -i.bak '8i\\\xlerb' src/library/stats/vignettes/reshape.Rnw
./configure
make
# Error: compiling TeX file 'reshape.tex' failed with message:
# Running 'texi2dvi' on 'reshape.tex' failed.
# LaTeX errors:
# ! Undefined control sequence.
# l.8 \xlerb
<...>
# Execution halted
# make[1]: *** [Makefile:103: vignettes] Error 1
bin/R CMD Sweave src/library/stats/vignettes/reshape.Rnw 
# Output file:  reshape.tex
pdflatex reshape.tex
# This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.24 (TeX Live 2022/Debian)
# (preloaded format=pdflatex)
<...>
# ! Undefined control sequence.
# l.8 \xlerb
#           
# ?

If pdflatex reshape.tex does succeed on your system, try texi2pdf -V
reshape.rex. If that doesn't fail either, we'll have to read the
makefiles and reconstruct the exact command used by the build system.

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan

On Tue, 9 Apr 2024, Ivan Krylov wrote:
> At this point in the build, R already exists, is quite operable and
> even has all the recommended packages installed. The build system then
> uses this freshly compiled R to run Sweave on the vignettes. Let me
> break the build in a similar manner and see what happens:
Ivan,

The R.SlackBuild script does not install a package unless the build
compeletes with exit code 0. Because building the vignettes failed it exited
with a non-0 exit code and is not installed. This is standard
SlackBuilds.org practice for non-core packages.

I could send you the build script off the mail list, but like all linux
distros each has a reason for building packages as they do.

Thanks,

Rich