[Rd] [External] Re: Update on rtools4 and ucrt support

Mon Aug 23 22:08:51 CEST 2021

On Mon, 23 Aug 2021, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 23/08/2021 8:15 a.m., jan Vitek via R-devel wrote:
>> Hi Jeroen,
>> 
>> I mostly lurk on this list, but I was struck by your combative tone.
>> 
>> To pick on two random bits:
>> 
>>> … a 6gb tarball with manually built things on his personal machine…
>> 
>>> … a black-box system that is so opaque and complex that only one person
>>> knows how it works, and would make it much more difficult for
>>> students, universities, and other organisations to build R packages
>>> and libraries on Windows…
>> 
>> 
>> Tomas’ tool chain isn't a blackbox, it has copious documentation (see [1])
>> and builds on any machine thanks to the provided docker container.
>> 
>> This is not to criticise your work which has its unique strengths, but to
>> state the obvious: these strengths are best discussed without passion
>> based on factually accurate descriptions.
>
> I agree with Jan.  I'm not sure a discussion in this forum would be fruitful, 
> but I really wish Jeroen and Tomas would get together, aiming to merge their 
> toolchains, keeping the best aspects of both.
>
> I haven't been involved in the development of either one, but have been a 
> "victim" of the two chain rivalry, because the rgl package is not easy to 
> build.  I get instructions from each of them on how to do the build, and 
> those instructions for one toolchain generally break the build on the other 
> one.  While it is probably possible to detect the toolchain and have the 
> build adapt to whichever one is in use, it would be a lot easier for me (and 
> I imagine every other maintainer of a package using external libs) if I just 
> had to follow one set of instructions.
>
> Duncan Murdoch

Here are just a few comments from my perspective (I am an R-core
member, but am not part of the CRAN team and do only very limited work
on Windows). Other R-core members may have different perspectives and
insights.

One bit of background: dealing with encoding issues on Windows has
been taking an unsustainable amount of R-core resources for some time
now. Tomas Kalibera has been taking the lead on trying to address
these issues in the existing framework, but this means he has not had
the time to make any of the many other valuable and important
contributions he could make. The only viable way forward is to move to
a Windows tool chain that supports UTF-8 as the C library current
encoding via the Windows UCRT framework.

Tomas Kalibera has, on behalf of all of R core and in
coordination with CRAN, been looking for a way forward for some
time and has reported on the progress in several blog posts at
https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/. This has lead to
the development of the MXE-based UCRT tool chain, which is now
well tested and ready for deployment.  Checks using the UCRT tool
chain have been part of the CRAN check process for a while. I
believe CRAN plans to switch R-devel checks and builds to the
UCRT tool chain during the upcoming CRAN downtime. I expect there
will be some communication from CRAN on this soon, including on
any issues in supporting binaries for both R-devel and R-patched.

In putting together something as large as a tool chain there will
always be many choices, each with advantages and disadvantages.  Some
things may be advantages in some settings and not others. Taking just
one case in point: Cross compilation. This is likely to be a better
approach for CRAN in the future and is supported by the MXE framework
on which the new tool chain is based.

The much more recent changes in rtools4 to support UCRT are at this
point not yet as well tested as the new tool chain. Once these changes
to rtools4 mature, and if binary compatibility can be assured, then
having a second tool chain may be useful in some cases.  But if there
are incompatibilities then it will be up to rtools4 to keep up with
the tool chain used by CRAN. On the other, contributing to improving
the MXE-based tool chain may be a better investment of time.

Best,

luke

>
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-- 
Luke Tierney
Ralph E. Wareham Professor of Mathematical Sciences
University of Iowa                  Phone:             319-335-3386
Department of Statistics and        Fax:               319-335-3017
    Actuarial Science
241 Schaeffer Hall                  email:   luke-tierney using uiowa.edu
Iowa City, IA 52242                 WWW:  http://www.stat.uiowa.edu