[Rd] Windows MinGW compiler clarification, consequences

[Martin Morgan]

The information at

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html#The-MinGW-compilers

and

http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/

is slightly inconsistent about the compiler used to build Windows
binary packages available through cran.

The 'candidate' package of the recommended MinGW-5.0.0.exe installs
g++/g77 3.4.4 (as does the updated installer MinGW-5.0.2.exe). "An
alternative..." described on the cran page lists g++/g77 3.4.5. The
murdoch-sutherland site says "The release version of gcc-3.4.2
included in MinGW-3.2.0-rc-3 is used by the core developers" and
mentions that patches to g77 and to ld are used.

My questions are:

1) which compiler is actually used for creating windows binary
   packages available on cran?

2) Are the patches to g77 and ld still relevant?

3) what issues are we likely to encounter -- code incompatibility, ???
   -- changing from 3.4.2 to the current compiler tools?

As a more specific example, a particular Bioconductor package depends
on the cran package odesolve; odesolve has Fortan source
files. Example R code in the Bioconductor package evaluates without
issues when the .zip file from cran is used, but generates warnings
(originating from the Fortran code of odesolve) when compiled locally:

Warning: intdy--  t (=r1) illegal 
Warning: t not in interval tcur - hu (= r1) to tcur (=r2)
Warning: intdy--  t (=r1) illegal 
Warning: t not in interval tcur - hu (= r1) to tcur (=r2)
Warning: lsoda--  trouble from intdy. itask = i1, tout = r1
Error in lsoda(y = y0, times = times, fderiv, parms = c(mod = mod), rtol = 1e-04,  : 
	Illegal input to lsoda


R version: 2.3.0 (2006-04-24)

>gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 3.4.2 (mingw-special)
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Thanks for any guidance,

Martin Morgan
Bioconductor