[Rd] compiling R under cygwin

[Prof Brian Ripley]

Yes,

> What is the advantage of building this?

was my question too.  If you want a Unix-like version of R on PC hardware 
running Windows why not run a Unix-like OS under a virtual machine?

Quite a lot of the details are wrong: using FLIBS, BLAS_LIBS and LIBS as 
intended will solve most of the problems.  I would use --disable-nls 
--disable-mbcs as you don't need them (and in particular you don't benefit 
from MBCS support on Windows unless you are in a CJK locale).

Note that 2.5.1 is released and there is unlikely to be a 2.5.2, so any 
changes would be made only to R-devel.  It there is a convincing case to 
tailor a build for Cygwin there we can probably do so rather easily, but 
the need for ongoing support would be a worry.

(If platforms are not used and in particular not tested in the alpha/beta 
testing phases then the ability to build on them crumbles away.  We seems 
to be down to regular testers on Linux, Windows, MacOS X, Solaris and 
FreeBSD, with some help on AIX after a patch with none.)

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> Denham Robert wrote:
>> For various reasons,

I think it is only courteous to mention some good reasons if you want to 
take up people's time.

>> it suits our workplace to have a cygwin version of
>> R.  I am pretty sure that cygwin is still not a supported environment
>> for R, but we have managed to compile R-2.5.1 under cygwin without too
>> many dramas.  Our procedure is described below.  We still have a few
>> problems compiling libraries without manually changing files from .so to
>> .dll, but it seems ok.
>>
> I would expect other subtle problems as well, because Cygwin is not a
> normal Unix.  I don't know whether any of these differences matter to R,
> but some things to look out for are:
>
> - you can't unlink a file while it is open
> - filenames are not case sensitive
> - file permissions have strange defaults (everything is executable)
> - I think the executable format still needs to be Windows format
> - There's no such thing as a ptty
> - You'll probably need X11 for graphics, and will lose support for
> Windows metafile output (wmf)
>>
>> I was wondering whether this information is likely to be useful to
>> others, and if we should spend any time looking in to ways in which the
>> configure/build/install code could be modified to allow a standard
>> install.
>>
> What is the advantage of building this?  I don't think we want to
> support platforms just for the sake of supporting more platforms, but if
> there's a real need for it, that would be different.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>> Notes on building R under cygwin:
>>
>> export FFLAGS=-O3
>> export CFLAGS=-O3
>> export CXXFLAGS=-O3
>> export OBJCFLAGS=-O3
>> export FCFLAGS=-O3
>> export LDFLAGS='-lblas -lg2c -lintl'
>>
>> export R_OSTYPE=unix
>>
>> ./configure --prefix=/opt/freeware/R/R-2.5.1 \
>> --with-tcl-config=/usr/lib/tclConfig.sh \
>> --with-tk-config=/usr/lib/tkConfig.sh \
>> --with-blas=-lblas \
>> --with-lapack=-llapack \
>> --enable-R-shlib
>>
>> comment out Win32 in src/include/config.h and set Unix to 1, change .so
>> to .dll. change .so to .dll and in Makeconf.
>> in src/extra/xdr/rpc/types.h comment out defn of malloc.
>>
>> Change .so to .dll in Makefile's
>>
>> edit Makeconf and set R_OSTYPE to unix
>>
>> make -j2
>>
>> when blas doesn't link, re-run command with -lblas -lg2c on end and
>> change output to .dll
>>
>> edit Rstrptime.c and change wcstod to atof.
>>
>> in modules:
>> when X11 and internet falls over add -lintl to link line. add -lg2c and
>> -lblas to lapack
>>
>> comment out library/base/R/library.R lines 47-51 to avoid arch check
>> which seems to go wrong!
>>
>> make -j2
>> make install
>>
>> edit  /opt/freeware/R/R-2.5.1/lib/R/etc/Makeconf and add '-lintl -lg2c
>> -lblas' to the end of ALL_LIBS
>> so the module building works. Change .so to .dll also
>> (can't see how to to this for the build tho...)
>>
>>
>> Our cygwin info is:
>>              sysname              release              version
>>      "CYGWIN_NT-5.1" "1.5.20s(0.155/4/2)"  "20060527 19:21:22"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Robert Denham
>> Environmental Statistician
>> Remote Sensing Centre
>> Telephone 07 3896 9899
>> www.nrw.qld.gov.au <http://www.nrw.qld.gov.au/>
>>
>> Department of Natural Resources & Water
>> QScape Building, 80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly Qld 4068
>>
>> ************************************************************************
>> The information in this email together with any attachments is
>> intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed
>> and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.
>> Any form of review, disclosure, modification, distribution
>> and/or publication of this email message is prohibited, unless
>> as a necessary part of Departmental business.
>> If you have received this message in error, you are asked to
>> inform the sender as quickly as possible and delete this message
>> and any copies of this message from your computer and/or your
>> computer system network.
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>

-- 
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