[ESS] Select CRAN mirror fails the first time

[James W. MacDonald]

This is a long standing problem between ESS and rterm. AFAIK, you can 
get the selection window to pop up when running R in _any_ way other 
than R/ESS (rterm from the command line, Rgui, etc.).

You can get around the problem (in decreasing order of kludginess) by 
setting your CRAN repository as Stephen notes below, or by loading the 
tcltk package first, or by either

chooseCRANmirror()
or
install.packages()

then a real quick C-g, C-c C-c to unfreeze the process. After which you 
can use either of the above functions and the selection window will pop 
up as normal.

This final 'solution' comes in handy when you try to use 
install.packages() and at the last moment realize that you haven't set 
your CRAN repository nor loaded tcltk ;-D

Best,

Jim

Stephen Eglen wrote:
> If you set the CRAN repos as an option beforehand, does that avoid the
> problem?
> 
> e.g. in my .Rprofile I have:
> 
> options(repos=c(CRAN="http://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R"),
>         papersize="a4")
> 
> Stephen
> 
> Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> I have not been able to reproduce this problem when running Rterm.exe
>> under the Windows command line cmd.
>>
>>             -s
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Rodney Sparapani <rsparapa at mcw.edu> wrote:
>>> Stavros Macrakis wrote:
>>>> When I perform a command that requires a CRAN mirror (e.g.
>>>> update.packages) under ESS, the system hangs and does not display the
>>>> CRAN mirror selection window.  If I quit out of this (C-g C-c C-c) and
>>>> try again, it works on the second try.  Under the RGui, the popup
>>>> window works the first time.
>>>>
>>>> Is there a fix or workaround for this?
>>>>
>>>>            -s
>>>>
>>>> ESS 5.3.10
>>>> R 2.8.1
>>>> Emacs 22.3.1
>>>> Windows XP
>>>>
>>> Actually, I think I have seen this problem both with and without
>>> ESS using the R command-line rather than the GUI.  So, I don't
>>> think this is an ESS issue.  But, under Windows, I suppose you
>>> can't test it from the command line, correct?
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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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> 
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-- 
James W. MacDonald, M.S.
Biostatistician
Douglas Lab
University of Michigan
Department of Human Genetics
5912 Buhl
1241 E. Catherine St.
Ann Arbor MI 48109-5618
734-615-7826