[Rd] Rtools and MinGW

[Thomas Mang]

On 04.04.2011 11:04, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2011, Thomas Mang wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have R version 2.8.1 and Rtools 28 installed (as you might guess,
>> set up years ago). In Rtools the MinGW GCC 4.2 compiler toolset is
>> included.
>>
>> For my regular C/C++ programs I have also installed, separately, the
>> full MinGW bundle with the latest GCC 4.5 compiler tools. So I have
>> two g++ variants on the same machine.
>>
>> According to the Rtools documentation, the bin directory of it shall
>> be in the system PATH, and very early in the PATH (first elements).
>> Presently the bin directory of the Rtools-MinGW is front.
>> Fine but Ok for my daily C++ work I actually prefer that the regular
>> (non-Rtools) MinGW compiler is invoked, hence I would prefer putting
>> that in front. But then, of course, invoking g++ from R development
>> would refer to the regular MinGW compiler toolset. When I do R
>> development, would you expect it to cause problems if actually the
>> regular MinGW (gcc 4.5) is invoked, and not the version that came
>> bundled with Rtools (4.2) ? Or is this something I should better stay
>> away from ?
>> If not likely to work, what would you suggest to do instead ?
>
> Follow the posting guide and update your R before posting ....
>
> We do not support ancient versions of R, and it is very likely that R
> 2.8.1 does not work correctly with gcc 4.5.2: there are
> incompatibilities in the argument passing.

OK I can update but in general I think it's unlikely that the MinGW 
version bundled with Rtools will ever be the same as the regular MinGW 
version (even if just by update cycle delays).
Is there any other way to tell Rtools where to search for MinGW-bin 
except of setting the globally applicable PATH variable ? Some 
configuration file or so ?

thanks,
Thomas