[ESS] ESS on unix cluster

[Rodney Sparapani]

Marie-Pierre Sylvestre wrote:
> Hi,
>
> thanks for your email. The reasons why I did not want a pointer to the 
> instructions is that 1) I haven't been successful in following them 
> and 2) I do not understand all the comments from the ess-site.el file. 
> I guess I should have been more precise. So I will try being more 
> explicit. First, emacs is in the directory Tools, which I have no 
> privilege over. Second, I downloaded and extracted ESS in my own 
> directory (call it MP for simplicity.
>
> Numbers here refer to the numbering in the link you sent. My comments 
> are in caps.
>
>    1. |cd| to a directory where you keep emacs lisp files, or create a
>       new directory (for example, $HOME/emacs) to hold the
>       distribution. This directory will be referred to below as "the
>       ESS distribution directory". DONE
>    2. Retrieve the latest version from ESS downloads area
>       <http://ess.r-project.org/downloads/ess> to ESSDIR. DONE
>    3. Extract the files from the disribution.
>                 If you are using GNU tar, |tar zxf ess-VERSION.tgz|.
>                 Otherwise, |gunzip < ess-VERSION.tgz | tar xf -|,
>            
>
>       The |tar| command will create the subdirectory ess-VERSION and
>       install the files there. DONE
>
>    4. Edit the file ESSDIR/ess-VERSION/lisp/ess-site.el as explained
>       in the comments section of that file. IT REFERS TO SECTION 1.1
>       FROM WHICH I UNDERSTAND THAT I DO NOT HAVE TO MODIFY THE FILE.
>       CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG.
>
If "everything" works for you after this installation, then editing is not
necessary.  However, there are many facets to ESS, and it is not uncommon
to have to tweak a few settings.  Of course, you have the opportunity to
over-ride any of these settings in .emacs...   But, the idea of a Unix
installation is that a system administrator would do the installation and
make any system-specific changes here so that everyone would be spared the
burden of making them avoiding duplication of effort.
>
>   1.
>
>
>    2. If you are using GNU Emacs add the line
>                 (load "ESSDIR/ess-VERSION/lisp/ess-site")
>            
>
>       to $HOME/.emacs. For XEmacs, if you followed the XEmacs package
>       system installation advice, add the line
>
>                 (require 'ess-site)
>            
>
>       to $HOME/.xemacs/init.el. Otherwise, for XEmacs, add the line
>
>                 (load "ESSDIR/ess-VERSION/lisp/ess-site")
>            
>
>       to $HOME/.xemacs/init.el.
>
> I DID NOT HAVE A .EMACS FILE SO I CREATED ONE IN MP (load 
> "ess-5.3.0/lisp/ess-site")
>
No, not in MP.  Put .emacs in $HOME (as documented above and in all
GNU Emacs literature; this hasn't changed with the most recent release
I hope).
> Sorry if my questions seem very simple, but again, I am not familiar 
> with these types of structure.
>
> Thanks for any help you can provide,
>
> MP
No problem.  That's what we don't get paid for :o)

-- 
Rodney Sparapani      Center for Patient Care & Outcomes Research (PCOR)
Sr. Biostatistician              http://www.mcw.edu/pcor
4 wheels good, 2 wheels better!  Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW)
WWLD?:  What Would Lombardi Do?  Milwaukee, WI, USA