build R pacakge for windows -ERROR: compilation failed for package xxx

Question

I am having trouble to build a dummy testing package for R on windows. for testing purpose,in R terminal, I input:

a=rnorm(10)
package.skeleton("pkgtest")

then I run R CMD check pkgtest on this dummy package and got error like

* using R version 2.12.0 (2010-10-15)
* using platform: i386-pc-mingw32 (32-bit)
* using session charset: ISO8859-1
* checking for file 'pkgtest/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* checking extension type ... Package
* this is package 'pkgtest' version '1.0'
* checking package dependencies ... OK
* checking if this is a source package ... OK
* checking for executable files ... OK
* checking whether package 'pkgtest' can be installed ... ERROR Installation failed.

EDIT,The full log file:

* installing *source* package 'pkgtest' ...
** libs
cygwin warning:
  MS-DOS style path detected: C:/R/R-212~1.0/etc/i386/Makeconf
  Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /cygdrive/c/R/R-212~1.0/etc/i386/Makeconf
  CYGWIN environment variable option "nodosfilewarning" turns off this warning.
  Consult the user's guide for more details about POSIX paths:
    http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'pkgtest'
`* removing 'C:/DOCUME~1/xxxx'` 

That is all. I have a data a in the data folder, so it is not empty. The Rd file can actually compile to pdf by Rcmd rd2pdf, its title is not empty.

did I missing something very basic for this error? I Have Rtools2.12 installed. I even have package inline and Rcpp intalled and running examples fine. To test my R environment setup, I downloaded Rcpp source package and did a R cmd check on Rcpp, it went fine.

Answer 1

Yes, a lot if all you did were the steps documented above.

Firstly, did you do as the output from package.skeleton asks you to?:

> a=rnorm(10)
> package.skeleton("pkgtest")
Creating directories ...
Creating DESCRIPTION ...
Creating Read-and-delete-me ...
Saving functions and data ...
Making help files ...
Done.
Further steps are described in './pkgtest/Read-and-delete-me'.

In particular the last line.

You don't quote the full CHECK log, I get:

$ R CMD check pkgtest
* checking for working pdflatex ... OK
* using log directory '/home/gavin/tmp/pkgtest.Rcheck'
* using R version 2.11.1 Patched (2010-08-17 r52767)
* using session charset: UTF-8
* checking for file 'pkgtest/DESCRIPTION' ... OK
* checking extension type ... Package
* this is package 'pkgtest' version '1.0'
* checking package dependencies ... OK
* checking if this is a source package ... OK
* checking for executable files ... OK
* checking whether package 'pkgtest' can be installed ... ERROR
Installation failed.
See '/home/gavin/tmp/pkgtest.Rcheck/00install.out' for details.

So you should go and check the contents of the .out file it mentions. I have the following in that file:

$ cat /home/gavin/tmp/pkgtest.Rcheck/00install.out
* install options are ' --no-html'

* installing *source* package ‘pkgtest’ ...
** R
** data
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
Warning: ./man/pkgtest-package.Rd:34: All text must be in a section
Warning: ./man/pkgtest-package.Rd:35: All text must be in a section
*** installing help indices
Error in Rd_info(db[[i]]) : 
  Rd files must have a non-empty \title.
See chapter 'Writing R documentation' in manual 'Writing R Extensions'.
* removing ‘/home/gavin/tmp/pkgtest.Rcheck/pkgtest’

Which is fairly self-explanatory, once you look at the package source.

You needed at least:

> a=rnorm(10)
> package.skeleton(name = "pkgtest", list = "a")

And then you should note that you do have to edit the Rd files. It is a design feature that prompt() and package.skeleton() do not create valid Rd files to get package authors to write the minimum documentation for their packages.

Answer 2

You need to look at the errors in the file listed in the next line you didn't show.

When I try to retrace your steps, I also get an error:

/tmp/pkgtest$ r -e 'package.skeleton("pkgtest")'
Creating directories ...
Creating DESCRIPTION ...
Creating Read-and-delete-me ...
Saving functions and data ...
Making help files ...
Done.
Further steps are described in './pkgtest/Read-and-delete-me'.
/tmp/pkgtest$ R CMD INSTALL pkgtest/
* installing to library ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’
* installing *source* package ‘pkgtest’ ...
** data
** help
Warning: /tmp/pkgtest/pkgtest/man/pkgtest-package.Rd:33: \
        All text must be in a section
*** installing help indices
Error in Rd_info(db[[i]]) : 
  Rd files must have a non-empty \title.
See chapter 'Writing R documentation' in manual 'Writing R Extensions'.
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/pkgtest’
/tmp/pkgtest$ 

For package.skeleton() to be meaningful, you need to give it one or more functions, data objects, ... which you did not.