R does not handle package non-ASCII DESCRIPTION files properly

[Markus Hoenicka]

Hi,

I've contacted the processx package maintainer on a problem reported 
here previously (see 
https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2020-April/244667.html). He 
suggested to try the github version but that triggered a different type 
of error which does not seem to be package-specific.

1st try: build from a local copy of the github package sources with 
default locale settings on a German Windows 10 system


> install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master",repos=NULL,type="source")
Installing package into ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
* installing *source* package ‘processx’ ...
** using staged installation
Error : Invalid DESCRIPTION file

Authors@R field gives no person with maintainer role, valid email
address and non-empty name.

See section 'The DESCRIPTION file' in the 'Writing R Extensions'
manual.

ERROR: installing package DESCRIPTION failed for package ‘processx’
* removing ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library/processx’
Warning message:
In install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master", repos = NULL,  :
   installation of package ‘/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master’ had 
non-zero exit status


2nd try: same as above, but with LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
same result as above

3rd try: edit DESCRIPTION file and remove accented characters in author 
name
(change "Gábor", "Csárdi" to "Gabor", "Csardi")

> install.packages("/cygdrive/c/Temp/processx-master",repos=NULL,type="source")
Installing package into ‘/usr/lib/R/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
* installing *source* package ‘processx’ ...
** using staged installation
** libs
gcc -ggdb -O2 -pipe -Wall -Werror=format-security 
-Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fstack-protector-strong 
--param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -std=gnu99 
-fdebug-prefix-map=/cygdrive/d/cyg_pub/devel/R/R-3.6.3-1.x86_64/build=/usr/src/debug/R-3.6.3-1 
-fdebug-prefix-map=/cygdrive/d/cyg_pub/devel/R/R-3.6.3-1.x86_64/src/R-3.6.3=/usr/src/debug/R-3.6.3-1 
  -Wall tools/px.c -o tools/px
[...]

So this circumvents the problems in processing the non-ASCII description 
file (which is properly tagged as UTF-8 BTW), but it results in the same 
compilation failure as reported in the message above.

As mentioned in the other report, Cygwin is a fresh installation as of 
April 28, R package version is R 3.6.3.1.

regards,
Markus


-- 
Markus Hoenicka
http://www.mhoenicka.de
AQ score 38