Project Build Commands in Eclipse with Sweave and R

1. Is there any role for the Project menu when working with StatET and Eclipse using Sweave and R?

2. If so, are there any learning resources that explain how this might 开发者_JAVA技巧work?

3. Do these menus offer anything over and above a makefile?

I'm curious to learn more about building moderately complex Sweave/LaTeX/R projects. Specifically, the Project menu has options Clean... and Build Automatically which intrigue me.

I'm curious to learn more about building moderately complex Sweave/LaTeX/R projects. Specifically, the Project menu has options Clean... and Build Automatically which intrigue me.

Hi Jeromy, I never managed to properly setup R and Eclipse, so I will only give you a partial answer.

Generally the Clean command is used to remove the compiled files from a project, so I assume it will delete any .ps or .pdf file generated by Eclipse.

The Build automatically setting (which is an on/off switch) rebuilds the project every time you save a file.

As a side note, to generate reports I use the combo LyX + Sweave that works very well. And for R scripts I find Gedit + RGedit nice and lightweight.

I don't know the internals of Eclipse very well, but I think these menu items are there for generic Eclipse projects that can link to the utilities that build your 'project' from 'source'. Looking under Project > Properties > Builder shows one builder configured, 'R Internal' that is not configurable or editable.

Personally I've never used a makefile for Sweave document creation, instead using the External Tools menu to setup the process for building a sweave Rnw file into a PDF. (under Run > External Tools > Configure External Tools. Also see here). This has worked well for me.

Have you considered asking your question on the StatEt mailing list ?