Thursday, March 5, 2009

Fixing Rkward startup problems

Rkward is a Nice IDE project for R based on standard KDE components such as Kate, etc.

However, most people wanting to try it (version 0.5b) have come across a startup bug, where Rkward says it can't find some plugins, resulting in a useless interface since some plugins are required for proper operation.

After spending quite some time looking for the solution to this problem, and finding it, I decided to document it here in three simple steps:

  1. The first task is to find the file 'all.pluginmap': just type "locate all.pluginmap" at the console. Mine was located on "/usr/share/apps/rkward/all.pluginmap"
  2. Open "~/.kde/share/config/rkwardrc" with your favorite editor and fix the path to "all.pluginmap" you have just found out in the variable "Plugin Maps" under "[Plugin Settings]".
  3. The if you start Rkward again, you will stumble on another bug (derived again from a hardcoded path) which tells you that some php file cannot be found. To fix this one you have to make a link on your home directory to an Rkward instalation folder. Open a terminal and type "ln -s /usr/share/apps/rkward ~/rkward".
That should get you a working Rkward installation. Enjoy it!

ccp

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