I got rubber to work with AucTeX and Sweave (Rnw) files with the help of this.

Basically, combined with my other stuff, I tweaked my .emacs file to look like:

<pre class="src src-sh">;;following is AucTeX with Sweave -- works

;;http://andreas.kiermeier.googlepages.com/essmaterials (setq TeX-file-extensions ‘(“Snw” “Rnw” “nw” “tex” “sty” “cls” “ltx” “texi” “texinfo”)) (add-to-list ‘auto-mode-alist ‘(“\.Rnw\'” . Rnw-mode)) (add-to-list ‘auto-mode-alist ‘(“\.Snw\'” . Snw-mode)) (add-hook ‘Rnw-mode-hook (lambda () (add-to-list ‘TeX-command-list ‘(“Sweave” “R CMD Sweave %s” TeX-run-command nil (latex-mode) :help “Run Sweave”) t) (add-to-list ‘TeX-command-list ‘(“LatexSweave” “%l %(mode) %s” TeX-run-TeX nil (latex-mode) :help “Run Latex after Sweave”) t) ;; following 3 lines for rubber, taken from same site as next paragraph, http://www.nabble.com/sweave-and-auctex-td23492805.html, xpdf to open (add-to-list ‘TeX-command-list ‘(“RubberSweave” “rubber -d %s && open ‘%s.pdf'” TeX-run-command nil t) t) (setq TeX-command-default “Sweave”)))

;; AucTeX with rubber ;;http://www.nabble.com/sweave-and-auctex-td23492805.html (eval-after-load “tex” ‘(add-to-list ‘TeX-command-list ;;‘(“Rubber” “rubber -d %t && xpdf ‘%s.pdf‘” TeX-run-command nil t) t)) ;; change by vinh ‘(“Rubber” “rubber -d %t && open ‘%s.pdf'” TeX-run-command nil t) t))

Now, when an Rnw file is open, I can press C-c C-c, select Sweave. Then repeat, select RubberSweave (or LatexSweave).