[Rd] build 32-bit R on x86_64?

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Hi Vinh,

On 9 August 2011 at 16:40, Vinh Nguyen wrote:
| Dear R-Devel,
| 
| I'm using Ubuntu on an x86_64 machine and would like to have both the
| 32-bit and 64-bit versions of R built from source.  By default,
| following the usual build procedures yields 64 bit R.  Looking at
| [these](http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html#Sub_002darchitectures),
| I thought I could build 32-bit R by executing
| 
| r_arch=32 ./configure
| 
| and building R like usual (make).  However, after seeing this error message,
| 
| /usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file
| `../../include/32/Rconfig.h': No such file or directory
| 
| I realize I am misunderstanding the instructions.  Could someone
| please clarify how I could go about compiling both 32-bit and 64-bit
| versions of R on my Linux machine?  Thank you!

I do not think that multiarch build (ie 32 and 64 at the same time) are fully
supported yet on Ubuntu or Debian. It is coming, but just like a number of
other things, not exactly overnight. It is a release goal.

In the meantime, you can always use virtualization. I have a Debian 32-bit
system and an Ubuntu 32-bit system in KVM virtualization on my Ubuntu 64-bit
server.  That works well.  Kvm, or Xen, or Virtualbox, or Vmware, ... all
offer fairly decent virtualization.  

Debian/Ubuntu specific questions are even more welcome on r-sig-debian.

Dirk

-- 
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