[ESS] Re : Re: Re : Re: R-versions

[Martin Maechler]

>>>>> Gérald Jean <gerald.jean at videotron.ca>
>>>>>     on Thu, 9 Oct 2014 13:55:23 -0400 writes:

    > Yes,
    > in fact several times as I played with the settings in my .emacs, trying to make it work. But it works now with the inclusion of Ista's settings.

Well, but that is really a  "last resort" workaround that should
never be necessary.
I have not used such a setting for more than 10 years probably !

At startup, ESS tries (quite a bit) to find all versions of R
installed on your computer, i.e., (as Vitalie mentioned) in your
PATH  (environment variable) or more precisely in the  exec-path
emacs lisp variable - which is typically initialized from the
above PATH (and other emacs settings).

If "the rest" of your computer / emacs setup is "sane", it just
*should* find the R version.

More technically what happens:
In ess-site.el, there's a function  ess-r-s-versions-creation
defined and called. 
For R, it makes use of the the function
ess-r-versions-create  you could re-call yourself via M-x ess-r-versions-create.
That functions (re)creates a global variable

     ess-r-versions-created 

which you can ask about (and see the value) via  

      C-h v ess-r-versions-created 

For me, its content is humongous, because I - as R core member
and "R archaelogist" try to keep many versions of R being available:

So for me, the above shows

("R-1.9.1" "R-1.9.0" "R-1.8.0" "R-1.7.1" "R-1.7.0" "R-1.7" "R-1.6.2" "R-1.6.1" "R-1.6.0" "R-1.5.1" "R-1.5.0" "R-1.4.1" "R-1.4.0" "R-1.3.1" "R-1.3.0" "R-1.2.3" "R-1.2.2" "R-1.2.1" "R-1.2.0" "R-1.1.1" "R-1.1.0" "R-1.0.1" "R-1.0.0" "R-2-debian" "R-2.9.2" "R-2.9.1" "R-2.9.0" "R-2.8.1" "R-2.8.0" "R-2.7.2" "R-2.7.1" "R-2.7.0" "R-2.6.2" "R-2.6.1" "R-2.6.0" "R-2.5.1" "R-2.5.0" "R-2.4.1" "R-2.4.0" "R-2.3.1" "R-2.3.0" "R-2.2.1" "R-2.2.0" "R-2.15.3" "R-2.15.2" "R-2.15.1" "R-2.15.0" "R-2.14.2" "R-2.14.1" "R-2.14.0" "R-2.13.2" "R-2.13.1" "R-2.13.0" "R-2.12.2" "R-2.12.1" "R-2.12.0" "R-2.11.1" "R-2.11.0" "R-2.10.1" "R-2.10.0" "R-2.1.1" "R-2.1.0" "R-2.0.1" "R-2.0.0" ....
 "R-3.1.1" "R-3.1.0" "R-3.0.3" "R-3.0.2" "R-32norm" "R-3.0.1" "R-3.0.0" 
"R-devel-valgrind-lev2" "R-devel-no-ldouble" "R-devel"
.... 
)

Yes, all these are in my PATH (typically almost all the above via symbolic
links into a /usr/local/bin/  PATH) when I start emacs.

Using symbolic links into a directory which is definitely on
your PATH allows you to have many different versions of R
available within the same emacs ESS session.

But it remains a riddle via  /usr/bin does not seem to be part
of your PATH ... or more likely not part of your emacs
exec-path. That's why  Vitalie has asked about those.

In short, please report (from Emacs)

       C-h v exec-path

and (from a shell / terminal -- try both  M-x shell from inside
       Emacs, and a shell / simple terminal outside emacs) :

       echo $PATH


Martin


    > Le 09/10/14, Rmh  <rmh at temple.edu> a �crit :
    >> did you restart emacs after the installation so its information would be refreshed?
    >> 
    >> Rich
    >> 
    >> Sent from my iPhone
    >> 
    >> > On Oct 9, 2014, at 12:26, "G�rald Jean" <gerald.jean at videotron.ca> wrote:
    >> > 
    >> > Thanks Ista,
    >> > 
    >> > it worked just fine. What surprises me though is that until yesterday, before 3.1.1 was installed by admin, I didn't have any special statement in my .emacs for the system's version of R, the previous one being 2.15.?
    >> > 
    >> > G�rald
    >> > 
    >> > Le 09/10/14, Ista Zahn <istazahn at gmail.com> a �crit :
    >> >> I think you can set inferior-R-program-name, e.g.,
    >> >> 
    >> >> (setq inferior-R-program-name "/usr/bin/R")
    >> >> 
    >> >> However, I don't see that documented in the manual[1], and it seems to
    >> >> be a FAQ. Should this be documented, or is there another recommended
    >> >> way to do it?
    >> >> 
    >> >> Best,
    >> >> Ista
    >> >> 
    >> >> [1] http://ess.r-project.org/Manual/ess.html#Latest-version
    >> >> 
    >> >>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 11:27 AM, "G�rald Jean" <gerald.jean at videotron.ca> wrote:
    >> >>> Hello,
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> I am running R from ESS on a linux box (RedHat). The admin of the server just installed R-3.1.1 in /usr/bin and I can't start it from Emacs, starts OK from the command line just by typing R.
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> I also have a patched version (3.1.0) installed in a private directory. From Emacs, "M-x R", "M-x R-patched" and "M-x R-newest" all start the R-3.1.0 patched version???
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> I also have TERR and Revo64 from RevolutionAnalytics installed in a private directory, I can start any of them from Emacs but not the R-3.1.1, installed in the standard /usr/bin location???
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> Any ideas???
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> Thanks for your support,
    >> >>> 
    >> >>> G�rald Jean