[ESS] Emacs finding "R" on Windows {was "Release of ESS 5.3.5"}

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> "PL" == Phillip Lord <phillip.lord at newcastle.ac.uk>
>>>>>     on Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:50:38 +0100 writes:

>>>>> "FAT" == Frede Aakmann Tøgersen <FredeA.Togersen at agrsci.dk> writes:
    >>> Well, finding all the versions of R is going to be heuristic, so there is
    >>> nothing to stop you from doing both. I would suggest the following:
    >>> 
    >>> 1) Check a variable set by the user -- they can always
    >>> override things.
    >>> 2) Check c:/Program Files as this is the canonical and
    >>> default location for storing programs on windows.

    FAT> Yes, for the english version of Windows XP. For instance in the danish
    FAT> version it is

    FAT> c:/Programmer

    FAT> How many language-specific versions of Windoze are there?

[ !! Thanks, Frede, for that! ]

 
    PL> Ah. I didn't know that windows internationalised that. 

{{ AFAIK they've even internationalized the function names in
   Excel/Vbasic ...   the Horror-Land ... }}

    PL> For me (getenv "ProgramFiles") returns the right location though. So

    PL> (directory-files 
    PL> (concat (getenv "ProgramFiles")
    PL> "\\R"))


    PL> Should return all the R directories in the standard place. For me that is...

    PL> ("." ".." "R-2.5.1")

Indeed (and it also works with "/" instead of "\\");
I've changed the ESS sources to use  (getenv "ProgramFiles")
everywhere instead of  "c:/progr.......

    PL> Failing that 

    PL> (executable-find "R.exe")

    PL> which is...

    PL> "c:/Program Files/R/R-2.5.1/bin/R.exe"

    PL> will work iff R is in the path. 

(which it is not, I think, after a default installation of R on windows)


    PL> After that, 

    PL> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\R-core\R\Current Version

    PL> gives the current version


    PL> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\R-core\R\[version]\InstallPath

    PL> gives it's location. w32-regdat gives access to these values, although this
    PL> also requires an external executable. 

Hmm, on the GNU emacs 22.1 (on Windows Server 2003) which I've
got from Vincent's,
I don't seem to get anything from 
   w32-regdat  (variable)
or w32-regdat  (function).

and the "emacs-official"   w32-fns.el  file full of Windows (NT)
support functions does not contain the string "regis"
which would mean it has no official e-lisp support for accessing
the registry ?

    PL> If I get the time, I'll try and write some lisp to get this to work. 

That would be quite useful for the community, thank you in
advance!

Martin