[ESS] How to avoid search for versions of R

[Vitalie Spinu]

>>>> Heinz Tuechler <tuechler at gmx.at>
>>>> on Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:56:47 +0100 wrote:

  > Dear All,

(...)

  > Rodney is often very helpful and I don't feel offended by his response. He may
  > have missunderstood my comment on e-lisp. I am not against e-lisp, but I have
  > other priorities, and I don't want to study the manuals for hours just to save
  > some seconds at start up of emacs. This does certainly not mean that I expect
  > others to do it for me. I fully understand that Rodney expects ESS users
  > knowing "something" about emacs' and I would generally agree.

I am of the opinion that every ESS user should read at least first 4
chapters of the marvelous "Emacs Lisp Intro: (emacs-23/eintr).".

People will spending a day reading it, will never abandon emacs
afterward. It clarifies the whole concept of emacs.

  > (setq ess-r-versions nil)  ;;  *BEFORE* ess-site is loaded (!)

  > I put this line as second line immediately after the first line in my .emacs.23
  > ;; -*- mode: Emacs-Lisp; mode:outline-minor; outline-regexp: ";;+ +" -*-
  > (setq ess-r-versions nil)  ;;  *BEFORE* ess-site is loaded (!)

  > Still I see in the Message buffer:
  > For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
  > Loading pc-select...done
  > Loading paren...done
  > Loading d:/emacs/ess-12.04/lisp/ess-site...
  > Finding all versions of R on your system...
  > Sorry, no version of R could be found on your system.
  > Loading d:/emacs/ess-12.04/lisp/ess-site...done
  > Loading outline...done

Yes, the implementation is not clean. ess-r-versions is used somewhere
down the code.  This is why I call for some small refactoring of that
part.

Would be nice to have a switch, for example
`ess-find-executables-p'. And also, `ess-executables-dir-list' with a
listing of additional dirs where ESS would look for it's R, S etc
executables in addition to current system and emacs paths. Then
independently of the system type, an user can add dirs to that variable
and forget about the hustle of system paths.

Vitalie.