R SIG Debian - Oct 2008 - problem with update.packages (PR#13161)

On 14 October 2008 at 09:39, Simon Blomberg wrote:
| Hi, is anyone else getting this error? Could this be a bug?:
| 
| > update.packages(ask=FALSE)
| Error in read.dcf(pkgpath, fields = fields) : 
|   Line starting 'unix; ...' is malformed!
| 
| > sessionInfo()
| R version 2.8.0 RC (2008-10-12 r46696) 
| x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 

Confirmed in plain R using the same package built this morning from last
night's tarball from Denmark:  Running update.packages() yields:
> update.packages()
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
Error in read.dcf(pkgpath, fields = fields) :
  Line starting 'unix; ...' is malformed!


OTOH I don't have a problem running my 'update.r' script (included
in littler as
/usr/share/doc/littler/examples/update.r) which just downloaded / upgraded
ten packages. It is equivalent to calling 
> repos <- "http://cran.r-project.org"
> lib.loc <- "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"
> update.packages(repos=repos, ask=FALSE, lib.loc=lib.loc)
and that sequence also works in plain R.  Could someone please dig into
update.packages() ? 

Dirk 

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.

edd at debian.org wrote:
> On 14 October 2008 at 09:39, Simon Blomberg wrote:
> | Hi, is anyone else getting this error? Could this be a bug?:
> | 
> | > update.packages(ask=FALSE)
> | Error in read.dcf(pkgpath, fields = fields) : 
> |   Line starting 'unix; ...' is malformed!
> | 
> | > sessionInfo()
> | R version 2.8.0 RC (2008-10-12 r46696) 
> | x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 
> 
> Confirmed in plain R using the same package built this morning from last
> night's tarball from Denmark:  Running update.packages() yields:
> 
>> update.packages()
> --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
> Error in read.dcf(pkgpath, fields = fields) :
>   Line starting 'unix; ...' is malformed!
> 
> 
> OTOH I don't have a problem running my 'update.r' script
(included in littler as
> /usr/share/doc/littler/examples/update.r) which just downloaded / upgraded
> ten packages. It is equivalent to calling 
> 
>> repos <- "http://cran.r-project.org"
>> lib.loc <- "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"
>> update.packages(repos=repos, ask=FALSE, lib.loc=lib.loc)
> 
> and that sequence also works in plain R.  Could someone please dig into
> update.packages() ? 
> 
> Dirk 
> 
Hmm, some of us are wary of running update.packages() in non-production 
versions. Is the problem perhaps originating in getCRANmirors() or 
chooseCRANmirror()?

-- 
    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
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