On Mon, 26 May 2008, Jonathan Baron wrote:
> It used to be that, whenever I added or updated a new package, the
> file /usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages.html would be updated (on Linux).
> Now I find that this does not happen anymore.
It does happen, but only if you install a package to the .Library
directory. That file is only intended as a listing of the main library,
not other libraries (as which are in the library path is
session-specific). As NEWS for R 2.6.0 says
o install.packages() on a Unix-alike now updates
doc/html/packages.html only if packages are installed to
.Library (by that exact name).
> So I found this function make.packages.html, which seems to do what I
> think should be done automatically. But it puts its output in a file in
> /tmp/...,
It is a helper for help.start(), which sets up details of the current
packages in the session temporary directory. Please do consult its help
file.
The function used to update doc/html/packages.html is
utils:::link.html.help(), which is a wrapper for
tools:::unix.packages.html.
> which I then have to move, in an extra step, to where it should be. I
> don't understand why this happens. I think that the old behavior was
> better.
It caused a lot of needless updating.
> I have two reasons for this. First, my R page (finzi.psych.upenn.edu)
> has a list of all packages. As it happens, since this change has
> occurred, it has been out of date, until today. Second, for my own
> use, I have a Firefox bookmark to
> file:/usr/lib/R/doc/html/packages.html, which was also out of date.
Let's hope you have a vaiid file:// URL ....
> I don't subscribe to r-devel, so, in case this gets posted, please use
> group reply.
What we don't know is where you are installing your packages. If it is to
the main library, the behaviour should be unchanged (and I have just
tested it and it works for me). If it is to another library, the
intention never was to list packages in other libraries.
[Note that all this applies to Unix-alikes: Windows does not have symbolic
links (OK, some filesystems on some versions have a very limited form) and
R does things differently there.]
>
> Jon
> --
> Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
> Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
--
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