R devel - Sep 2015 - R-devel_2015-09-14 throws an error in reg-packages test

Hello.

I have successfully built R on windows scores of times, and have never
come across this problem. For this build, I am using the current 4.6.3
prerelease version of Rtools, Windows7 64 bit, and
R-devel_2015-09-14.tar.gz

When running make check, I get the following error:


running code in 'reg-packages.R' ...make[3]: *** [reg-packages.Rout]
Error 1
make[2]: *** [test-Reg] Error 2
make[1]: *** [test-all-basics] Error 1
make: *** [check] Error 2


Looking at reg-packages.Rout.fail shows:
>
> ## else w/o clause:
> ## could use file.copy(recursive = TRUE)
> system(paste('cp -R', shQuote(pkgSrcPath), shQuote(tempdir())))
> pkgPath <- file.path(tempdir(), "Pkgs")
> ## pkgB tests an empty R directory
> dir.create(file.path(pkgPath, "pkgB", "R"), recursive =
TRUE,
+        showWarnings = FALSE)
> p.lis <- if("Matrix" %in%
row.names(installed.packages(.Library)))
+          c("pkgA", "pkgB", "exNSS4") else
"exNSS4"
> for(p. in p.lis) {
+     cat("building package", p., "...\n")
+     r <- build.pkg(file.path(pkgPath, p.))
+     cat("installing package", p., "using file", r,
"...\n")
+     ## we could install the tar file ... (see build.pkg()'s definition)
+     install.packages(r, lib = "myLib", repos=NULL, type =
"source")
+     stopifnot(require(p.,lib = "myLib", character.only=TRUE))
+     detach(pos = match(p., sub("^package:","", search())))
+ }
building package pkgA ...
Error: dir.exists(dir) is not TRUE
Execution halted

This error does NOT occur when building R-patched_2015-09-13, so it
must be something in R-devel.

A similar question was asked previously in 2012, once on r-help [1]
and once here [2], but did not receive any answer.

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Avi

[1] <https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help//2012-October/337237.html>
[2]
<https://mailman.stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel//2012-October/065002.html>

On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Avraham Adler <avraham.adler at
gmail.com> wrote:
> When running make check, I get the following error:
>
> running code in 'reg-packages.R' ...make[3]: ***
[reg-packages.Rout] Error 1
> make[2]: *** [test-Reg] Error 2
> make[1]: *** [test-all-basics] Error 1
> make: *** [check] Error 2
>
> Looking at reg-packages.Rout.fail shows
The r-devel commit log [1] shows that Martin has been working on this
test over the past few days. Sometimes work-in-progress causes the
daily svn snapshot to be broken; typically it gets fixed the next day
or so. If you don't want to wait, try building
R-devel_2015-09-10.tar.gz that one works.

[1] https://github.com/wch/r-source/commits/trunk

>>>>> Jeroen Ooms <jeroen.ooms at stat.ucla.edu>
>>>>>     on Wed, 16 Sep 2015 22:56:19 +0200 writes:
    > On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Avraham Adler <avraham.adler at
gmail.com> wrote:
    >> When running make check, I get the following error:
    >> 
    >> running code in 'reg-packages.R' ...make[3]: ***
[reg-packages.Rout] Error 1
    >> make[2]: *** [test-Reg] Error 2
    >> make[1]: *** [test-all-basics] Error 1
    >> make: *** [check] Error 2
    >> 
    >> Looking at reg-packages.Rout.fail shows

    > The r-devel commit log [1] shows that Martin has been working on this
    > test over the past few days.

Yes... and you can also find which misfeature this was
addressing. While the above problem only ever happened on
Windows {because it often does not work with symbolic links ..}
the check was even generally broken for a couple hours a few
days earlier, because I had failed to commit all my relevant changes....

    > Sometimes work-in-progress causes the
    > daily svn snapshot to be broken; typically it gets fixed the next day
    > or so.

Exactly.  Thank you Jeroen.

Typically you'd report such problems only if they persist for
more than a day, or at least only report to R-core .. and we
will thank you if we did not know about it already (and on a
lucky day even thank you *if* we knew already ;-).

Martin

    > If you don't want to wait, try building
    > R-devel_2015-09-10.tar.gz that one works.

    > [1] https://github.com/wch/r-source/commits/trunk