[R] rgdal under windows?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Benjamin Lloyd-Hughes wrote:

> Has anyone had any joy getting the rgdal package to compile under windows?

First you need to meet the system requirements:

SystemRequirements: GDAL library from 
http://www.remotesensing.org/gdal/download.html

Since that has build instructions which say

  GDAL can be built on Windows using MS VC++ 6.x and MS Visual Studio .NET 
  (C++) at the DOS command line.

you will first need to get a copy of DOS and those compilers.  (I suspect
they mean the Windows command prompt, but they don't seem to know the
difference which is not confidence-inspiring.  I also suspect they mean
`or' not `and'.)  Then you will have to fathom out how to link against a
VC++ DLL which since this C++ is very unlikely to work with MinGW.  So you
probably need to make the package's rgdal.dll under VC++ -- see
README.packages.

I have tried and failed to make GDAL with MinGW.

> I've been trying with MinGW using Duncan Murdoch's Rtools but to no avail.

Do read README.packages and follow the advice at the top.  You don't have 
the (mis-attributed) tools in your path.  But that is probably the least 
of your potential problems.

-- 
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