[R] Building R as shared library (dll) in Windows

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 5 Jun 2004, Gustavo Pinheiro wrote:

> I've read that to compile R as a shared library in Linux you have to issue the following command before make:
> ./configure --enable-R-shlib
> 
> How is that done in Windows? There is no 'configure' in src/gnuwin32 and if it has to go somewhere in Mkrules, I could not figure out exactly where.
> 
> Help please.

There are no `shared libraries' under Windows (and in fact
--enable-R-shlib builds a dynamic library rather than a shared library on
systems which care about the distinction).  However, it is the default to
build R as R.dll with import library libR.a.  You could try reading the
documentation, especially that on (D)COM interfaces to R, which make this
process easier.  However you can link your own code against R.dll, and
there are examples in src/gnuwin/front-ends (and a README file there).

-- 
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