[rkward-devel] RKWard on Windows

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi,

> during the last days I worked with RKWard on Windows (XP). I did the custom
> install (not the bundle). Every thing is working basically fine, no crashes
> or such. The only thing I did not get to work so far is package management
> (package update and installation ...). Rgui didn't work in the first place
> too but it seems that the --internet2 flag did the trick thus no problems
> with that any longer. Is there anything to consider for RKWard regarding
> such issues?

not that I know of, and it works fine on my WindowsXP. This answer in the R 
windows FAQ seems to indicate that it's a known, but not really understood 
problem in R:
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/rw-FAQ.html#The-Internet-download-
functions-fail_002e
I don't know whether there is any sensible way for us to work around this. Let 
me know, if you have an idea.

> Moreover I used to work with R.2.11 but switched to R2.12 today which
> resulted in a non starting RKWard. I did a reinstallation of RKWard and
> pointed to the new location of R. I did not check if the is a config file
> which can be changed if need or such. My point is that this might be a
> minor problem for average users. ...

I can see your point, but once again, I can't think of a solution. There can 
be an arbitrary number of independent R installations on one system, and these 
do not even need to be in the registry. RKWard needs to know which one to use. 
The "config file" for that is rkward.bat itself. Modifying the location of the 
R-executable, there, would have done the trick in your case.

Currently RKWard 0.5.4 compiled with any version of R between 2.9.x and 2.12.x 
should work with any of these versions of R at runtime. But sometimes there 
are incompatibilities, and for instance RKWard 0.5.4 compiled with R 2.8.x 
cannot be used with R 2.9.x or above. Also, quite often, you need the latest 
version of RKWard in order to run the latest version of R. For instance, 
RKWard 0.5.3 cannot run any user command in the R Console with R >= 2.12.x.

So, I think the only safe assumption is that for a new installation of R, you 
will have to install the most recent version of RKWard. I don't see a good way 
to improve on that situation.

One thing that we *can* improve is the case that the old R installation no 
longer exists. We'd simply need a check for that in rkward.bat, and then 
display a helpful message. Any volunteer for some Windows batchfile scripting?

Regards
Thomas
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