R devel - Oct 2008 - R CMD INSTALL problem

Dear list members,

I've run into a problem with R CMD INSTALL under Windows Vista and R 2.8.0:

--------- snip -----------

C:\Users\John Fox\workspace>c:\R\R-2.8.0\bin\R CMD INSTALL car
installing to ''


---------- Making package car ------------
  adding build stamp to DESCRIPTION
  installing NAMESPACE file and metadata
  installing R files
  installing inst files
  installing data files
  preparing package car for lazy loading
Warning in list.files(lib, pattern = paste("^", pkg_regexp, sep =
""), ful
s = TRUE) :
  list.files: '' is not a readable directory
Error in findpack(package, lib.loc) : there is no package called 'car'
Calls: <Anonymous> -> findpack
Execution halted
make[2]: *** [lazyload] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make: *** [pkg-car] Error 2
*** Installation of car failed ***

Removing '/car'

----------- snip ------------

Apparently, the package isn't being installed to the standard library
location.

The same command works perfectly fine under R 2.7.2:

----------- snip ------------

C:\Users\John Fox\workspace>c:\R\R-2.7.2\bin\R CMD INSTALL car
installing to 'c:/R/R-2.7.2/library'


---------- Making package car ------------
  adding build stamp to DESCRIPTION
  installing NAMESPACE file and metadata
  installing R files
  installing inst files
  installing data files
  preparing package car for lazy loading
  preparing package car for lazy data loading
  installing man source files
  installing indices
  installing help
 >>> Building/Updating help pages for package 'car'
     Formats: text html latex example chm
  Adler                             text    html    latex           chm
  Angell                            text    html    latex           chm
  Anova                             text    html    latex   example chm
  Anscombe                          text    html    latex           chm

  . . .
  
  vif                               text    html    latex   example chm
  which.names                       text    html    latex   example chm
Microsoft HTML Help Compiler 4.74.8702

Compiling c:\Users\JOHNFO~1\WORKSP~1\car\chm\car.chm


Compile time: 0 minutes, 2 seconds
80      Topics
248     Local links
3       Internet links
1       Graphic


Created c:\Users\JOHNFO~1\WORKSP~1\car\chm\car.chm, 144,998 bytes
Compression decreased file by 191,708 bytes.
  adding MD5 sums

* DONE (car)

----------- snip ------------

I see in the Windows CHANGES file that Rcmd.exe has been modified. Do I have
to set an environment variable that I didn't have to set before?

Any help would be appreciated.

John

------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 3:23 PM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
> I've run into a problem with R CMD INSTALL under Windows Vista and R
2.8.0:
>
> --------- snip -----------
>
> C:\Users\John Fox\workspace>c:\R\R-2.8.0\bin\R CMD INSTALL car
> installing to ''
Not sure if this is relevant for you, but I was seeing similar
behavior on Linux, and the reason turned out to be that the INSTALL
script invokes

R_DEFAULT_PACKAGES=NULL R --no-restore --slave

which ran code in my .Rprofile, but without the usual packages
attached. In my case, this was causing an error (because of not
carefully written code in the profile) leading to an empty string for
$lib (which seems to be happening for you too).

-Deepayan