[Rd] Symlinks when building R on windows

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-12-18 5:24 AM, Olivier BARTHELEMY wrote:
> I think this is more suited for the devel mailing list than the help one.
>
> I'm trying to build R on windows, With Rtools installed, and configure/make
> in R-3.0.2 sources folder from a cygwin console.

This doesn't sound like a good idea.  The Rtools are set up for native 
Windows builds.  If you run configure yourself, you'll be targeting a 
Cygwin build -- but that's something we don't support.

What you should do is follow the instructions for native Windows builds 
that are given in chapter 3 of the Installation and Administration 
manual.  In particular, *do not* run configure.

If you do choose to create a Cygwin build, please make sure it passes 
the tests before you use it.  I haven't seen one that does.

Duncan Murdoch


> I am stuck at the moment, because the build process tries create symlinks,
> and gcc build fails because the opened files containe the metadata of the
> not working symlink, and not the linked file.
> The first problematic files is src/extra/xz/alone_decoder.c, pointing to
> common/alone_decoder.c, but i guess the following buildt files would have
> the same problem.
> My configure didn't even detect the symlink cmd off cygwin while performing
> the tests, and i even launched configure with --disable-symlinks, but their
> creationis attmpted anyways.
> Is there any quick way to workaround that? And since it's .c or.h files we
> are symlinking here, couldn't we simply do 'eponym' C or h files that do a
> C #include to the relative path, which would be more portable than symlinks?
>