[R] Cross-compilers versus windows compilers (was optimal win dows R machine)

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Paul Hewson wrote:

> May I ask a naive follow up to this?   Having now been granted limited
> rights to use R-windows on a work PC, I wish to set up my home PC to support
> compiling packages and so on.   I currently have a working Linux set-up at
> home, is there any general advice as to whether it would be better to add in
> the cross-compilers there or is it better to persuade my home PC to dual
> boot windows and set up the full recommended windows compilation collection.

If you don't need Compiled HTML help (and my guess is that you don't) then
almost all packages can be cross-compiled.  (Of course, almost all the
public ones are already available in compiled form: many thanks to
Phillipe Grosjean for updates while I am travelling etc.)

Setting up a cross-compiler can be at least as frustrating as setting up a
native one.  I am offering one on the Rtools portal that works for me, but
is a little out-of-date.  There are others out there, but they mostly lack
Fortran.

I would try the cross-compiling route for now, but would warn that as we
move to using R itself for parts of the build procedure, cross-compiling
may become less viable.  Indeed, I managed to break it in R-devel for
a week or so recently.


PS on the original topic about VMware: my comments were principally about
speed running R for Windows under VMware.  It is probable that R is a
particularly bad fit, as its memory manager is already trying to make
Windows memomry management work like the Unix equivalent, and memory
management is crucial to R's performance.

>
> Thanks for any pointers
>
> Paul
>
> >From: Liaw, Andy (andy_liaw at merck.com)
> >Date: Wed Oct 17 2001 - 16:41:24 CEST
> >I agree with Mark about Linux, if for no other reasons than the fact that
> it
> >actually comes with the compilers needed to build R and do further code
> >development. Compared with doing it on Linux, compiling R from source on
> >Windows is not exactly a pleasure, even with the tremendous work to make it
>
> >even possible by Ripley and Mararrato.
> >Cheers,
> >Andy
>
>
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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 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

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