[Rd] Building R forr Windows (was Adding Tk extensions to R for windows)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Marsland, John wrote:

> Have you tried to make R under MSYS/MinGW, there would seem to be some
> obvious benefits to this over the current collection of Cygwin tools? In the
> end I don't think a separate windows install of R should be needed... in
> much the same way as the separate apple mac install has been discontinued in
> 1.8.0 now they have the osX/fink setup. I've had a play at configuring and
> making R with MSYS and I seem to be able to get quite a long way down the
> process, but I'd be interested in your views since you obviously have much
> more experience in this area.

MSYS is AFAIK based on a subset of Cygwin tools, similar to those we use.  
And we do use MinGW!  In the early days of MSYS its toolset was not
sufficient, and anyway we don't have the resources to replace working
methods. The `obvious benefits to this' are not obvious from your message!

There is a great deal of Windows-specific code in R.  One day we may 
attempt to use a common set of Makefiles generated by configure for the 
Windows port, but do be aware that it is only fairly recently that R's 
configure even ran under the Cygwin tools.

> 
> Regards,
> John Marsland
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wettenhall at wehi.EDU.AU [mailto:wettenhall at wehi.EDU.AU]
> > Sent: 30 September 2003 08:42
> > To: r-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: [Rd] Adding Tk extensions to R for windows
> > 
> > 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm developing an R/TclTk application which uses the BWidget and
> > Tktable Tk extensions and I'm trying to make it easy to install.
> > For now, I'm focusing on Windows users who start with nothing.
> > 
> > I have built Tcl/Tk and Tktable for windows using Msys/MinGW.
> > (BWidget contains only Tcl scripts so does not need building.)
> > I have then copied Tktable and BWidget into the lib subdirectory
> > of the Tcl directory in R source, created by unzipping R_Tcl.zip
> > from Brian Ripley's webpage.  (I should also try creating the
> > entire R_Tcl.zip myself, rather than mixing and matching.)
> > Finally I have followed the instructions in src/gnuwin32/INSTALL
> > including "make distribution" which has built
> > an R installation wizard including the Tk extensions.
> > 
> > It seems to work fine and I don't think I've violated any
> > license agreements - it's my understanding that Tktable and
> > BWidget source (both on sourceforge) are under BSD, like the other
> > Tcl already included with R.
> > 
> > Of course some would say that you can build faster and smaller Tcl
> > libraries using Visual C++.  I didn't notice much difference with my
> > application running Tktable.  I did try buildling Tcl/Tk with the
> > free version of VC++.NET SDK but nmake -f makefile.vc in
> > Tcl_source/win/ complained that vcvars32.bat needed to be run.  The
> > latest version of the (free) VC++.NET SDK seems to only have 
> > sdkvars.bat,
> > which does something similar to vcvars32.bat (i.e. set PATH, INCLUDE,
> > LIB and NetSamplePath), but running it didn't seem to help so I turned
> > to Msys/MinGW.  Maybe I should buy the full Visual C++/Visual Studio?
> > 
> > I'm wondering whether anyone would like to point out any potential
> > problems (license or otherwise) with distributing a customized R
> > installation wizard.
> > 
> > Also, I would be happy to become involved in the maintenance/testing
> > of R_Tcl.zip for windows if I'm qualified, but I suppose this would
> > require buying the full Visual C++/Visual Studio, right?
> > 
> > If there is sufficient building/testing from volunteers, are 
> > the R core
> > developers considering bundling more Tcl/Tk packages with R, 
> > or does the
> > problem of HOW MANY packages/megabytes to add mean that there 
> > would always
> > have to be a separate "batteries included" installation wizard?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > James
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > 
> 
> 
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595