[R] R2winBUGS & WinBUGS gui

[Uwe Ligges]

Evan Cooch wrote:
>> No. The idea is to use BRugs, i.e. OpenBUGS in such cases. If OpenBUGS 
>> lacks some features, you are certainly welcome to implement them and 
>> send patches to Andrew Thomas.
>>
> 
> Just finished trying the install of openBUGS under linux yet again. Same 
> problems (more or less), which I'll list here for the benefit (possibly) 
> of others who might go this route.
> 
> 1. connect to
> 
> http://www.mathstat.helsinki.fi/openbugs/
> 
> Download latest zip of openBUGS
> 
> 2. unzip it (preserving directory structure) onto Linux machine (in this 
> case, running Fedora Core 8 latest flavours of everything, including R).
> 
> 3. look at the 'docs' for installing under linux. I say 'docs' 
> advisedly, since there really isn't much to read - here it is in its 
> entirety.
> 
> OpenBUGS for both Windows and Linux can be downloaded as a .zip file 
> from here <http://www.mathstat.helsinki.fi/openbugs/OpenBUGS.zip>. The 
> source code comes with the installation: check the readme notes to see 
> how to compile the code. you will need to install Black Box 
> <http://www.oberon.ch/blackbox.html> as well.
> 
> 
>       Old Installation Instructions for LinBUGS (which may or may not
>       still work):
> 
>    1. Un-zip the .zip file into the folder of your choice.
>    2. Change the permissions for the LINBUGS and CBugs files (e.g. with
>       chmod 755 LinBUGS CBugs)
>    3. Change the temp directory in LINBUGS to the current directory (at
>       the moment it is "/home/ant/temp"). Use the full path name (can
>       anyone suggest a less ugly way of doing this? We don't want to put
>       the temp directory in OpenBUGS/).
>    4. Start LinBUGS with the command LINBUGS.
> 
> 
> (the admonition that it may or may not work is not inspiring). Confirmed 
> at step (2), where you're supposed to change permissions on 2 files 
> which, in fact, are *not* distributed in the openBUGS.zip file. This 
> makes it rather tough to install. ;-)
> 
> 
> I dug around, and found some folks have hacked together a LINGUS script 
> - one version I found fairly commonly looks like:
> 
> #!/bin/bash
> 
> export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 
> 
> DIR=$(dirname $0)
> cd "$DIR"
> if [ \! -e "$DIR/temp" ] ; then
> 	mkdir "$DIR/temp"
> fi
> 
> if [ -e bugs.so ] ; then
> 	./cbugs "$DIR" "$DIR/temp" "/bugs.so" 
> else
> 	./cbugs "$DIR" "$DIR/temp" "/brugs.so" 
> 
> 
> Fine, except for line two, which doesn't work with newer distros.
> 
> And, apparently (based on a bunch of websites I just looked at), BRugs 
> doesn't work under Linux, not unless you want to install the Blackbox 
> compiler (is there one for Linux?), and recompile. Not me (not today, 
> anyway...).
> 
> So, unless I (and a lot of folks who seem to be running into the same 
> issues), my preliminary conclusion is that neither openBUGS nor BRugs 

BRugs is just an interface to OpenBUGS.

> are ready for prime time on a Linux platform. Which seems a shame, given 
> how many people using MCMC etc. use Linux as their primary platform.

Yes, sure, and indeed, it is a shame that nobody of those people who 
want it to work under Linux is trying to submit patches to make it work.


Uwe Ligges



> Guess I'll have another look at JAGS.
> 
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