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

[peter dalgaard]

> On 28 Apr 2017, at 12:08 , Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.

Read more carefully: I said that the _fix_ is harmless for this case, but might not be so in general.

-pd

> 
> 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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>> posting-guide.html
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>>> 
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>>> 
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> 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
>> 
>> 	[[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