[Bioc-devel] New Windows toolchain

[Dan Tenenbaum]

Hi all,

This is relevant (and possibly quite important) to all package maintainers whose packages contain C or C++ code, or depend on one that does.

A new toolchain is available for building R and R packages on Windows. This toolchain uses gcc 4.9.2 whereas the old one used gcc 4.6.3.

Another major difference is that gcc is no longer in the PATH; and the flags -m32 and -m64 can't be used to delegate to the appropriate compiler, so any Makefiles/Makevars/configure scripts that expect to find gcc/g++ on the PATH need to be changed. 
See https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2015-March/070800.html and other emails in that thread for more information.

The new toolchain has been installed on the bioc-devel build machine for Windows, SO...it's possible that this could wreak a little havoc on our build system (just on windows) tomorrow. The main point of this email is to say not to worry, we'll figure these things out. If your package suddenly fails to build tomorrow, it's likely related to this change. We'll post updates as we figure out what package maintainers need to do to get things working again.

For those who develop on windows, grab the latest R-devel and the latest Rtools in order to be on the same page as the build system.

Let us know if you have questions.
Dan