Re: R does not handle package non-ASCII DESCRIPTION files properly

[Marco Atzeri <marco.atzeri@gmail.com>]

Am 30.04.2020 um 17:28 schrieb Markus Hoenicka:
> Hi,
> 
> I've contacted the processx package maintainer on a problem reported 
> here previously (see 
> https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2020-April/244667.html). He 
> suggested to try the github version but that triggered a different type 
> of error which does not seem to be package-specific.
> 
> 1st try: build from a local copy of the github package sources with 
> default locale settings on a German Windows 10 system
> 
> 
>> install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master",repos=NULL,type="source") 
>>
> Installing package into ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library’
> (as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
> * installing *source* package ‘processx’ ...
> ** using staged installation
> Error : Invalid DESCRIPTION file
> 
> Authors@R field gives no person with maintainer role, valid email
> address and non-empty name.
> 
> See section 'The DESCRIPTION file' in the 'Writing R Extensions'
> manual.
> 
> ERROR: installing package DESCRIPTION failed for package ‘processx’
> * removing ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library/processx’
> Warning message:
> In install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master", repos = NULL,  :
>    installation of package ‘/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master’ had 
> non-zero exit status
> 
> 
> 2nd try: same as above, but with LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
> same result as above
> 
> 3rd try: edit DESCRIPTION file and remove accented characters in author 
> name
> (change "Gábor", "Csárdi" to "Gabor", "Csardi")
> 
>> install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master",repos=NULL,type="source") 
>>
> Installing package into ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library’
> (as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
> * installing *source* package ‘processx’ ...
> ** using staged installation
> ** libs
> gcc -ggdb -O2 -pipe -Wall -Werror=format-security 
> -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong 
> --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -std=gnu99 
> -fdebug-prefix-map=/cygdrive/d/cyg_pub/devel/R/R-3.6.3-1.x86_64/build=/usr/src/debug/R-3.6.3-1 
> -fdebug-prefix-map=/cygdrive/d/cyg_pub/devel/R/R-3.6.3-1.x86_64/src/R-3.6.3=/usr/src/debug/R-3.6.3-1 
>   -Wall tools/px.c -o tools/px
> [...]
> 
> So this circumvents the problems in processing the non-ASCII description 
> file (which is properly tagged as UTF-8 BTW), but it results in the same 
> compilation failure as reported in the message above.
> 
> As mentioned in the other report, Cygwin is a fresh installation as of 
> April 28, R package version is R 3.6.3.1.
> 
> regards,
> Markus
> 

Noted. I will look on both the two issues but it could take a bit.
I never looked at the build process of R packages in such details

Marco
R cygwin package maintainer