[ESS] problem starting help buffer in ESS

[William McCoy]

After a long absence from using ESS with R in XEmacs, I am beginning to 
use ESS now in Emacs.  However, I have a problem when trying to use 
help() or C-c C-v in an R session.

While running R in emacs in text or gui mode and trying to get help by 
any method, I get an ESS Help buffer in a new window with only the 
following message:

emacsclient: file name or argument required 

Try 'emacsclient --help' for more information

I can't seem to get any help page to load.  I presume there is something 
wrong with my setup, but I can't find information about how to correct 
this problem.  Can someone tell me what I need to do to set up ESS 
correctly on my system?


I include relevant system info below.  Let me know if I have left 
something out that will help you evaluate this problem:

When I start an R session, I get the following:
 

  > if(identical(getOption('pager'), file.path(R.home('bin'), 'pager'))) 
# rather take the ESS one
  +       options(pager='cat') 

  > options(STERM='iESS', str.dendrogram.last="'", editor='emacsclient', 
pager='emacsclient', help.pager='emacsclient', show.error.locations\
  =TRUE)

Fedora fc27
GNU Emacs 25.3.1
with ESS 16.10
from Fedora packages:
emacs-ess-16.10-4.fc27.noarch
emacs-common-ess-16.10-4.fc27.noarch

In my .emacs file I have:

(require 'ess-site) 

 

(setq ess-source-directory (lambda () (concat ess-directory "src/"))) 

(setq ess-dump-filename-template "%s.R") 

(setq auto-mode-alist (append '(("\\.[Rr]t\\'" . R-transcript-mode)) 

       auto-mode-alist)) 


 > sessionInfo() 

  R version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28) 

  Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu (64-bit) 

  Running under: Fedora 27 (Workstation Edition) 

 

  Matrix products: default 

  BLAS/LAPACK: /usr/lib64/R/lib/libRblas.so 

 

  locale: 

   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C 

   [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 

   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 

   [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C 

   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C 

  [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C 

 

  attached base packages: 

  [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base 

 

  loaded via a namespace (and not attached): 

  [1] compiler_3.4.2 tools_3.4.2


Thanks,
Bill

-- 
William D. McCoy
Geosciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003