[R] Error with installed.packages with R 3.4.0 on Windows

Duncan Murdoch
2017-04-28T10:08:05Z

On 28/04/2017 4:45 AM, Thierry Onkelinx wrote:
> Dear Peter,
>
> It actually breaks install.packages(). So it is not that innocent.

I don't think he meant that it is harmless, he meant that the fix is
easy, and is in place in R-patched and R-devel.  You should use
R-patched and you won't have the problem.

More generally, there's a lot more variety of systems in the wild than
on our test machines, so we really do rely on people testing things in
the alpha/beta/rc phase.  In this case we saw the error too late to fix
it (as I recall, it was very late in rc).  If more people had tested, we
might have found it earlier.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> Best regards,
>
> Thierry
>
>
> Op 28 apr. 2017 10:36 a.m. schreef "peter dalgaard" <pdalgd at
gmail.com>:
>
> Yes, we noticed this in the last days of the code freeze before release and
> shied away from inserting a workaround, partly because we couldn't see
what
> the root of the problem might be.
>
> For the purposes of installed.packages it is relatively harmless to treat
> the NA condition as FALSE, since it is just a matter of whether a cache is
> valid. I.e., it might cause an unnecessary cache rebuild. For other
> situations it might be more of an issue.
>
> The workaround (NA -> FALSE, basically) is in place in R-patched and
> R-devel.
>
> -pd
>
>> On 28 Apr 2017, at 07:47 , Thierry Onkelinx <thierry.onkelinx at
inbo.be>
> wrote:
>>
>> We have several computers with the same problem.
>>
>> Op 28 apr. 2017 7:25 a.m. schreef "Jean-Claude Arbaut"
<arbautjc at gmail.com
>> :
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am currently getting a strange error when I call
installed.packages():
>>
>> Error in if (file.exists(dest) && file.mtime(dest) >
file.mtime(lib) &&  :
>>  missing value where TRUE/FALSE needed
>> Calls: installed.packages
>>
>>
>> I am working with R 3.4.0 on Windows. I didn't get this error with
R
> 3.3.3.
>> Apparently, file.mtime() is returning NA well applied to a directory,
and
>> this causes the entire && expression to be NA, then the
"if" fails because
>> it needs either T or F.
>> The source of "installed.packages" seems to be roughly the
same as in R
>> 3.3.3, so I wonder if there have been other changes in R, maybe the
> logical
>> operators, that would make this function fail.
>>
>> Any idea?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Jean-Claude Arbaut
>>
>>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
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>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>>       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/
> posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> --
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Office: A 4.23
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com