On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:06:35 +0100, "Philippe Grosjean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote :
>Hello, >The discussion about version names leads me to the following question >(sorry, I change the message title): >Is it possible to enforce the user to select an option during R >installation? For instance, I want R to be installed with the registry entry >option set up and, let's say, with tcltk files installed. How do I ensure >this? > >Well, under Windows, Inno Setup that is used as the installer is plenty of >resources for that! You have lots of command line arguments, including >/SAVEINF and LOADINF/ that use a custom information file about the options. >Then, you can run the setup silently with /SP-, /SILENT or /VERYSILENT from >the command line, thus, from a batch script. > >Ultimately, it is possible to write an installer that will install R with >several options, with additional packages, etc... very easily without having >to rebuid the original R installer. You need both the rwXXXX.exe installer >(about 23Mb), and your custom installer (let's say with a couple of >additional packages, weighting a few hundreds of kb) downloaded in the same >directory. You run your custom installer, which in turn installs R silently >with the right options (it even can detect if R is already installed or >not). > >There is a real interest for this approach for projects like R Commander, or >SciViews-R. Indeed, it targets beginners and installation should be as >straigthforward as possible. Currently, you have to (1) install R (2) with >specific options, (3) install additional packages, and (4) switch Rgui in >SDI mode under Windows... before you can start working in R Commander or >SciViews-R. Definitely too many tasks for a beginner! > >So, I will experiment a little bit with Inno Setup in this direction and >intend to propose a web page about this topic, for Windows. > >Now, my two questions: >1) Does anyone has some experience using Inno Setup this way? >2) How to solve the problem of custom installation this way under >Linux/Unix? [with a batch script, I presume, but does somebody have a >skeleton for that: installing R with specific options + several additional >packages at once]. 1) I don't have experience using Inno Setup like that, but there are various newsgroups dedicated to discussion of Inno Setup (see http://www.jrsoftware.org/newsgroups.php), and I'm reasonably sure you'd be able to get help there. 2) Our assumption has been that Linux/Unix users are more sophisticated and less pampered regarding installations, so it's not as necessary to automate so much. There's also the issue that different Linux/Unix systems use different conventions for pre-packaged installs, so you would be setting yourself up for a lot of work if you attempt to support the majority of them. Duncan Murdoch ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
