[Rd] 'R CMD config' doesn't work on Windows

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 18 May 2006, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:

> On Wed, 17 May 2006, Seth Falcon wrote:
>
>> Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> writes:
>>> What is "config"?
>>
>>    Usage: R CMD config [options] [VAR]
>>
>>    Get the value of a basic R configure variable VAR which must be
>>    among those listed in the 'Variables' section below, or the header
>>    and library flags necessary for linking against R.
>>
>>> On Windows, it's assumed to be a Perl script stored in RHOME/bin and
>>> as the message says, there's no such thing.
>>
>> I guess this is a feature request then :-(
>> Any Perl experts keen on translating the shell script that does R CMD
>> config?  I assume that is more or less what would be required.
>
> You also need to collect the information.  Much of it is only relevant to
> building R on a Unix-alike: as the comment says
>
> ## <NOTE>
> ## The variables are basically the precious configure variables (with
> ## the R_* and MAIN_* ones removed), plus FLIBS and BLAS_LIBS.
>
> and they are extracted from ${R_HOME}/etc${R_ARCH}/Makeconf which does not
> exist on Windows.
>
> I think it is up to those who feel this is needed to contribute and
> maintain the code.

There are a few more problems:

1) The R for Windows build is relocatable, yet some of the answers
will need to be relative to the installation.  Since R CMD knows where 
R_HOME is, it could expand them out, or they could be in terms of R_HOME, 
depending on the intended usage.

2) This will not work when cross-compiling.

3) In some cases the answers are not available, e.g. for TCLTK_CPPFLAGS 
the headers are not usually installed.  So somehow you would have to 
ascertain if this was a source build or a binary distribution.

4) In some cases the answers depend on the MkRules file, which is an 
optional install.

-- 
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