[Rd] cygwin R-2.14.0 build fail

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2011, peter dalgaard wrote:

>
> On Nov 12, 2011, at 15:25 , Mark Carter wrote:
>
>> I tried to build R-2.14.0 on cygwin using the commands:
>> ./configure --with-x=no
>> make
>>
>> I started to get a whole lot of errors starting with:
>> /cygdrive/c/Users/mcarter/src/R-2.14.0/src/modules/internet/Rhttpd.c:275: undefined reference to `_R_InputHandlers'
>> which I have pasted at
>>
>> http://pastebin.com/GFb2pq92
>>
>> I'm aware that there is a cygwinports ports, but it seems outdated, and when I tried installing it, it was very lengthy and seemed more trouble that it was worth. I abandoned the installation attempt.
>>
>>
>> Any tips on a way forward?
>>
>
> As far as I can tell, what is happening to you is that cygwin needs 
> special configuration to build .dll libraries and ./configure does 
> not know how to set that up.

It does.  Currently R can be built under Cygwin, and how to do so is 
documented in the R-admin manual.  But that was not the case a few 
weeks ago, so you need to look in R-patched/R-devel (and Cygwin might 
change again ...).

> R is not officially supported under Cygwin. Basically, we - er, 
> Brian, mostly, I think - tried it several years ago, and it broke so 
> many times that patience ran out.

It was broken from most of 2011 too, for three separate reasons.

Even when it 'works', it is far slower than the native Windows port 
and it fails 'make check' (not handling CR-delimited files, problems 
with wide-characters as Cygwin does not have proper locales).

> Others seem to be having better luck with recent versions (Google 
> finds something that looks like ports of 2.13.2, so you might just 
> need a little patience to get 2.14.0), but I think you're altogether 
> better off over on
>
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cygwin-ports-general
>
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>
> -- 
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>
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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