[Rd] Clash between 'Cairo' and 'EBImage' packages on Windows

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:

> EBImage is dynamically linked against GTK, which includes cairo
> libraries, so those are installed along with GTK. Cairo seems to be
> statically linking to libcairo.dll.a. I would assume that if it is

That is an import library, so it is actually linked to libcairo-2.dll, 
which it ships.

> linked statically it should not get confused with a shared library
> present elsewhere in the path, but it looks like it does. I have no
> solution for that because unlike Cairo I cannot not statically link
> EBImage to GTK as it is not one library that I need, but a bunch of
> those.
>
> On Linux you won't get this problem as it uses the same centrally
> installed Cairo library.
>
> In a way it would be better, if Cairo relied on the gladewin32.sf.net
> which normally provides GTK (and thus cairo libraries) for Windows and
> linked dynamically, but probably to simplify user installations the
> developers wanted to avoid this.

It _is_ using dynamic loading, or there would be no conflict.  From the 
names, it looks very like that it is using a DLL from gladewin32.

The real issue looks rather like a versioning problem, that the cairo 
libraries installed as part of GTK and used by EBImage are way too old 
(cairo_pdf_surface_create was added at cairo 1.2, and cairo is at 1.6.4). 
So updating to the current GTK distribution may be all that is needed (and 
Henrik could also try replacing your GTK's libcairo-2.dll by that 
distributed with Cairo).

> There is not much I can do now about this, but I will follow the thread
> if anybody comes up with an idea to change the code if possible

The Cairo package (which ships DLLs) could rename them, as R itself does 
where it builds its own versions.  Or it could link statically (if that 
works, which it does not for e.g. package XML).

I don't really understand why this was posted to R-devel: it is not an R 
issue.


> Dr Oleg Sklyar
> Technology Group
> Man Investments Ltd
> +44 (0)20 7144 3803
> osklyar at maninvestments.com
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org
>> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Henrik Bengtsson
>> Sent: 19 July 2008 19:26
>> To: R-devel
>> Subject: [Rd] Clash between 'Cairo' and 'EBImage' packages on Windows
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> on Windows XP Pro with R version 2.7.1 Patched (2008-06-27
>> r46012) the 'Cairo' and the 'EBImage' packages does not play
>> well together.
>>
>> Loading EBImage before Cairo cause the following to happen:
>>
>> # Rterm --vanilla
>>> library(EBImage);
>>> library(Cairo)
>> Error in inDL(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now), ...) :
>>   unable to load shared library
>> 'C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.7.1pat/library/Cairo/libs/Cai
>> ro.dll':
>>   LoadLibrary failure:  The specified procedure could not be found.
>>
>> Error : .onLoad failed in 'loadNamespace' for 'Cairo'
>> Error: package/namespace load failed for 'Cairo'
>>
>> with a dialog titled 'Rterm.exe - Entry Point Not Found'
>> saying 'The procedure entry point cairo_pdf_surface_create
>> could not be located in the dynamic link library libcairo-2.dll'.
>>
>> Loading the packages in the reverse order works, but the
>> Rterm seems unstable, e.g. calling q() immediately after will
>> exit the R session without questions:
>>
>> # Rterm --vanilla
>>> library(Cairo)
>>> library(EBImage)
>>> q()
>> [Immediately back to the command line].
>>
>> I cannot reproduce the problem on R v2.7.1 on Ubuntu Hardy.
>>
>>> sessionInfo()
>> R version 2.7.1 Patched (2008-06-27 r46012)
>> i386-pc-mingw32
>>
>> locale:
>> LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
>> States.1252;LC_MON ETARY=English_United
>> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>>
>>
>> attached base packages:
>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>
>> other attached packages:
>> [1] EBImage_2.4.0 Cairo_1.4-2
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Henrik
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.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