[R] Installing package for i386

[Marc Schwartz]

On Aug 3, 2009, at 3:01 PM, Sarah Hawley wrote:

> I am trying to install a package from a collaborator that was given  
> to me as
> a zip file.
> I'm running R 2.9.0 using Mac OSX 10.5.7
> [R.app GUI 1.28 (5395) i386-apple-darwin8.11.1]
>
> foo.zip contains all the usual package directories (man, R, R-ex, etc)
> After unzipping foo, I used the following commands.
>
> $ R CMD INSTALL foo
> * Installing to library ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/ 
> library’
> * Installing *binary* package ‘foo’ ...
> * DONE (foo)
>
> I open the R GUI and type
>> library(foo)
> Error: package 'flsa' is not installed for 'arch=i386'
>
> I assume this error has something to do with my Linux architecture  
> but I
> have no idea what is really going on.
> Any suggestions would be appreciated.
>
> Thank you.
> Sarah

Sarah,

It looks like your colleague gave you a Windows binary version of the  
package. You cannot just unzip it and install it as such. The ZIP file  
would be the result of running 'R CMD build foo' on the package source  
tree on Windows, which does more than just archive the files in the  
package tree.

This has nothing to do with Linux BTW, as Mac OSX is a BSD Unix  
derivative, not Linux, albeit they are cousins of a sort...  :-)

Can your colleague provide you with just the actual source files in a  
tar or zip file without running R CMD build foo? If so, you can at  
least transfer the source files to your Mac and possibly build the  
package there for installation. This process will also be less  
complicated if the package only contains R code and no C or FORTRAN  
code.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz