R help - Sep 2005 - R CMD build produces tar error under FreeBSD 5.4

Hi R-helpers,

I am trying to build a package under FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0 using R
Version 2.1.1.

I have constructed a package using package.skeleton(), when I try

$ R CMD build foo
* checking for file 'foo/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* preparing 'foo':
* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
* cleaning src
* removing junk files
tar: Option -L is not permitted in mode -x
Error: cannot open file 'foo/DESCRIPTION' for reading

foo/DESCRIPTION exists and the permissions are correct. The same
command works under Linux Fedora 2.  The man pages on each OS imply
that tar differs across the two platforms.  Does anyone have any
thoughts on a work-around?

Thanks

Andrew
-- 
Andrew Robinson
Senior Lecturer in Statistics                       Tel: +61-3-8344-9763
Department of Mathematics and Statistics            Fax: +61-3-8344-4599
University of Melbourne, VIC 3010 Australia
Email: a.robinson at ms.unimelb.edu.au    Website: http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au

On Sun, 25 Sep 2005, Andrew Robinson wrote:
> Hi R-helpers,
>
> I am trying to build a package under FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE #0 using R
> Version 2.1.1.
>
> I have constructed a package using package.skeleton(), when I try
>
> $ R CMD build foo
> * checking for file 'foo/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
> * preparing 'foo':
> * checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... OK
> * cleaning src
> * removing junk files
> tar: Option -L is not permitted in mode -x
> Error: cannot open file 'foo/DESCRIPTION' for reading
>
> foo/DESCRIPTION exists and the permissions are correct. The same
> command works under Linux Fedora 2.  The man pages on each OS imply
> that tar differs across the two platforms.  Does anyone have any
> thoughts on a work-around?
No, because R does not use tar -L (which is to do with tape lengths on GNU
tar).

It does use tar chf and tar xhf.  The h modifier would appear to be
applicable only to dumps, so at a wild guess the error message means -h is
not permitted.  Try replacing xhf by xf.

-- 
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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595