R devel - Nov 2017 - Bug in R CMD INSTALL when handling invalid LazyData DESCRIPTION field

Hi, I think I've found a bug in R CMD INSTALL. When it tries to parse a
DESCRIPTION file with an invalid LazyData field, it errors out while
trying to print the correct error message:
> R CMD INSTALL .
* installing to library ?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4?
* installing *source* package ?samplepackage? ...
** data
Error in errmsg("invalid value of ", field, " field in
DESCRIPTION") :
  could not find function "errmsg"
* removing ?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/samplepackage?


It should instead be using that errmsg() function to print the more
helpful error message: "invalid value of LazyData field in
DESCRIPTION".

I've traced it down to this line of code in tools:::.install_packages()
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/trunk/src/library/tools/R/install.R#L977
. The errmsg() function actually is defined earlier on in the function,
but there seems to be a scoping issue that makes it not available here.

I've uploaded a sample project to reproduce the bug here:
https://github.com/agwells/R-CMD-INSTALL-bug

I'm running R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28), on Ubuntu 16.04.

Cheers,
Aaron

>>>>> Aaron Wells <aaronw at catalyst.net.nz>
>>>>>     on Fri, 24 Nov 2017 12:46:48 +1300 writes:
    > Hi, I think I've found a bug in R CMD INSTALL. When it tries to
parse a
    > DESCRIPTION file with an invalid LazyData field, it errors out while
    > trying to print the correct error message:

    >> R CMD INSTALL .
    > * installing to library
?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4?
    > * installing *source* package ?samplepackage? ...
    > ** data
    > Error in errmsg("invalid value of ", field, " field in
DESCRIPTION") :
    > could not find function "errmsg"
    > * removing
?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/samplepackage?


    > It should instead be using that errmsg() function to print the more
    > helpful error message: "invalid value of LazyData field in
DESCRIPTION".

    > I've traced it down to this line of code in
tools:::.install_packages()
    >
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/trunk/src/library/tools/R/install.R#L977
    > . The errmsg() function actually is defined earlier on in the function,
    > but there seems to be a scoping issue that makes it not available here.

    > I've uploaded a sample project to reproduce the bug here:
    > https://github.com/agwells/R-CMD-INSTALL-bug

    > I'm running R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28), on Ubuntu 16.04.

    > Cheers,
    > Aaron

Thank you very much, Aaron.
This is indeed a bug, and it looks that I had caused it when
introducing the internal str_parse() utlity.

It's too bad this is so close before release of R 3.4.3 and the
fix to the bug is not trivial (not very hard either) such that
it most probably will not make it into 3.4.3.

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich

Well, on the positive side, it seems to be a fairly limited bug. :)

You have to actually have a syntax error in your DESCRIPTION file, and
it needs to be in one of the fields passed to parse_description_field()
as defined in tools:::.install_packages(); which is only Biarch,
LazyData, ByteCompile, and KeepSource.

Cheers,
Aaron


On 11/24/2017 09:18 PM, Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> Aaron Wells <aaronw at catalyst.net.nz>
>>>>>>     on Fri, 24 Nov 2017 12:46:48 +1300 writes:
> 
>     > Hi, I think I've found a bug in R CMD INSTALL. When it tries
to parse a
>     > DESCRIPTION file with an invalid LazyData field, it errors out
while
>     > trying to print the correct error message:
> 
>     >> R CMD INSTALL .
>     > * installing to library
?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4?
>     > * installing *source* package ?samplepackage? ...
>     > ** data
>     > Error in errmsg("invalid value of ", field, " field
in DESCRIPTION") :
>     > could not find function "errmsg"
>     > * removing
?/home/example/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/samplepackage?
> 
> 
>     > It should instead be using that errmsg() function to print the
more
>     > helpful error message: "invalid value of LazyData field in
DESCRIPTION".
> 
>     > I've traced it down to this line of code in
tools:::.install_packages()
>     >
https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/trunk/src/library/tools/R/install.R#L977
>     > . The errmsg() function actually is defined earlier on in the
function,
>     > but there seems to be a scoping issue that makes it not available
here.
> 
>     > I've uploaded a sample project to reproduce the bug here:
>     > https://github.com/agwells/R-CMD-INSTALL-bug
> 
>     > I'm running R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28), on Ubuntu 16.04.
> 
>     > Cheers,
>     > Aaron
> 
> Thank you very much, Aaron.
> This is indeed a bug, and it looks that I had caused it when
> introducing the internal str_parse() utlity.
> 
> It's too bad this is so close before release of R 3.4.3 and the
> fix to the bug is not trivial (not very hard either) such that
> it most probably will not make it into 3.4.3.
> 
> Martin Maechler
> ETH Zurich
>