[ESS] Release of ESS 5.3.5

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "SE" == Stephen Eglen <S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk> writes:

  >> we are proud to announce the release of version 5.3.5 of ESS;
  --> http://ESS.r-project.org/downloads/ess/
  >> 
  >> Apart from documentation updates and patches, there are several new
  >> features, notably
  >> 
  >> 1) 'M-x R-newest',
  >> which will start the newest version of R that it can find on your system.
  >> And that should also automagically work on Windoze ...

  SE> For those of you now running ESS 5.3.5, I would be grateful to hear
  SE> whehter M-x R-newest works for you, especially on Windows.

  SE> The long term plan is to use R-newest functionality to work when M-x R
  SE> fails to find a version of R to start (i.e. inferior-R-program-name is
  SE> not set correctly).


Stephen

It fails for me. The problem comes from here....

(defun ess-r-version-date (rver)
 "Return the date of the version of R named RVER.1
The date is returned as a date string.  If the version of R could
not be found from the output of the RVER program, \"-1\" is
returned."
  (let (ver-string
	(date "-1"))
    (setq ver-string (shell-command-to-string
		      (concat rver " --version")))


As I use bash, this always returns....

bash: c:/Program: No such file or directory\n

and it all goes wrong from there. 


Would checking c:/Program Files/R/ for directories not work reasonably? If

c:/Program Files/R/R-x.x.x/bin/R.exe

exists then you can snarf the version from the R-x.x.x without messing around
with processes. Of course, some pathological maniac might change the numbers
so the versions don't match but, hey, they are pathological maniacs. 

BTW, just install ESS yesterday. Found a three other minor issues:


First: 

(defvar ess-lisp-directory
    (if (and (boundp 'load-file-name) load-file-name)
	;; A nice default
	(directory-file-name (file-name-directory
			      (file-truename load-file-name)))
      (defun find-load-file-directory nil
	"Locate directory in which load-file sits."
	(interactive)
	(let ((load-file-directory)
	      (beg (point)))
	  (list-command-history)
	  (set-buffer "*Command History*")
	  (goto-char (point-min))
	  (search-forward "(load-file ")
	  (goto-char (1+ (match-end 0)))
	  (setq beg (point))
	  (end-of-line)(search-backward "/")
	  (goto-char (match-end 0))
	  (setq load-file-directory
		(expand-file-name (buffer-substring beg (point))))
	  (kill-buffer "*Command History*")
	  load-file-directory))
      (directory-file-name (find-load-file-directory)))
    "Directory containing ess-site.el and other ESS files.")

Crashes for me with search-failed. Would

(file-name-directory (locate-library "ess-site.el"))

than the command history? 


Second: 

Had some weird issues with plot windows hanging -- at first I thought this was
bad, but they seem to be recovering now, so I guess this is not a problem.

Third: 

Reading through the R tutorial, I have realised that I know almost know
statistics. Suggestions welcome....


Phil