[Rd] Installation using iconv from glibc

[Smith, Virgil]

> > Is glibc is actually compatible (and/or is gnu libiconv essentially the only path)?
>
> R is built daily on Fedora 21 Linux which uses glibc 2.20 and has been for at least
> a decade with that and earlier versions of glibc.  No problems with installing
> using glibc have been reported in all that time (and many dialects of Linux have
> been used successfully).

Thank you for confirming that something stranger than my libiconv implementation
 selection must have been (and was) wrong with my environment.

Extracting the relevant test from the configure script and some manual hacking
showed that iconv_open worked for all of the tests except those involving
"latin1".  So some research revealed glibc's gconv uses plugin modules for
conversions and sure enough I was missing the ISO8859-1 module, a.k.a.
"latin1".  I got that compiled/installed and the configure tests passed.



> > If glibc should work, what should I check to troubleshoot my environment?
> >
> > The configure error I get is
> >      checking iconv.h usability... yes
> >      checking iconv.h presence... yes
> >      checking for iconv.h... yes
> >      checking for iconv... yes
> >      checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1", "ASCII" and "UCS-*"... no
> >      configure: error: a suitable iconv is essential
>
> You look in config.log for the details we cannot even guess at.

Sorry for the omission.  The log didn't seem to show anything other than that
the one specific test failed and I did not want to waste anyone's time combing
the log if it seemed my problem was very system specific rather than the
confusion of a novice user.

Thank you for being willing to dive deeper and my apologies if I consumed
more of anyone's time by NOT including more detail.

-- Virgil Smith

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