[ESS] ESS on unix cluster

[Kasper Daniel Hansen]

So Marie, I am kind of agreeing with you in that the instructions are  
a bit confusing. The main thing to keep in mind is that parts of the  
instructions are meant for older systems where it mattered. But it is  
really simple, here is a step-by-step guide.

First, create a directory to hold ess and untar the directory.

On my machine - because I sometimes have several emacs packaes, I  
create a directory
    ~/.emacs-packages
and inside this directory I then untar the files, meaning I get
   ess-5.3.8

Now, all you need to do is to load ESS when you start Emacs. You can  
do this in many ways, I do it the following way

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/.emacs-packages/ess-5.3.8/ 
lisp"))
(require 'ess-site)

These two lines essentially add the directory to the search path.

All the stuff you can do by editing ess-site.el are just the icing on  
the cake, essentially it allows for many ways to customize ESS. I  
would ignore that.

I add the additional little thing that I have a symbolic link  
inside .emacs-packages that points to ess-CURRENTVERSION, so I do

ln -s ess-5.3.8 ess

and then I have
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/.emacs-packages/ess/lisp"))


Kasper





On Oct 31, 2008, at 10:42 , Rodney Sparapani wrote:

> 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
>
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