[Rcpp-devel] Good news on R-Forge builds of Rcpp and Rcpp-using packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

R-Forge builds of Rcpp and Rcpp-related packages had been broken for a while.  

This started with Rcpp and its vignettes as I recall, but I fixed that a few
weeks ago.  Then the focus turned to packages using Rcpp, starting with
RcppArmadillo.  This failed with a very obscure, and very implausible error.
Stefan and I went back and forth, scratching our heads until Stefan made the
tar-ed local library available and I was able to reproduce the error locally
when pointing to that library.  

Long story short, it contained a corrupted Rcpp installation where a few
header files were zero length.  That was almost surely an OS / filesystem
issue, and it has now been taken care of.  

So build of packages using Rcpp, RcppArmadillo, and other Rcpp* packages
should now resume at R-Forge.

What I learned in the process that once can in fact depend on either CRAN or
current R-Forge package.  For example, if package foo is at version 1.5.0 on
CRAN but 1.5.2 on R-Forge, then a depends on foo (>= 1.5.2) will bring in the
R-Forge build.  

My thanks to Stefan for his help in debugging this, and for all the hours he
spent building, feeding and caressing R-Forge.  It really is appreciated.

Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com