R help - Jun 2004 - Help with Building an R Package in Windows

Hello R Helpers!

I'm a windows user who is trying to compile a package that was sent to me by
a Mac user.  The file was of type .tar.gz, I extracted its elements and saved
them to my R directory and then followed all of the steps towards building a
package found in the readme.packages file of R, ie. installing the tools.

However, I get errors in the command prompt.  The readme.packages file lists 2
approaches.  Both ways I get the same error 1.  using one of 2 commands: when I
try: R CMD INSTALL package, I get the error - " 'R' is not
recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch
file."  2. or when I try: make pkg-mypkg, I get the same error ("
'make'  is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable
program or batch file.")

So my conclusions were that the computer wasn't able to recognize make.exe
(one of the tools that I'd downloaded, installed and put into my R
directory).   Could anyone suggest further steps?

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Ellen Connell wrote:
> I'm a windows user who is trying to compile a package that was sent to
> me by a Mac user.  The file was of type .tar.gz, I extracted its
> elements and saved them to my R directory and then followed all of the
> steps towards building a package found in the readme.packages file of R,
You definitely have not followed *all* the steps.
> ie. installing the tools.
That's not the only step there.
> However, I get errors in the command prompt.  The readme.packages file
> lists 2 approaches.  Both ways I get the same error 1.  using one of 2
> commands: when I try: R CMD INSTALL package, I get the error - "
'R' is
> not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or
> batch file."  2. or when I try: make pkg-mypkg, I get the same error
("
> 'make' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable
> program or batch file.")
> 
> So my conclusions were that the computer wasn't able to recognize
> make.exe (one of the tools that I'd downloaded, installed and put into
> my R directory).  Could anyone suggest further steps?
>From the top of the file readme.packages
    *** This file contains a lot of prescriptive comments.  They are
    here as a result of bitter experience.  Please do not report problems
    to R-help unless you have followed all the prescriptions. ***

Please do as you are asked.  In particular note the comments

  All of these need to be installed and in your path, and the
  appropriate environment variables set.

  Assuming that ...\rw10xx\bin is in your path, use

ignoring which is almost certainly your problem.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
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