[R] RCMD check error windows

[Uwe Ligges]

Patrick Giraudoux wrote:

> Dear Lister,
> 
> I am working with Windows XP and R 2.1.0 and can check and build 
> home-made packages easily (just *.r, *.rmd, *.rda files, no compiled 
> code). However for some reasons, I cannot check or build the package 
> 'foreign' from the source (I took it as an exercise...). After some 
> lines of sentences OK (here omitted and replaced by ...),  I get a 
> message like this:
> 
> RCMD check foreign
> ...
> installing R.css in 'C:/R/rw2010/src/library/foreign.Rcheck'
> -------Making package foreign-------------------
> adding build stamp to DESCRIPTION
> intalling NAMESPACE file and metadata
> making dll
> make[4]: ***[libR.a] Error 255
> make[3]: ***[libR.] Error 2
> make[2]: ***[srcDynlib] Error 2
> make[1]: ***[all] Error 2
> make: ***[pkg-foreign] Error 2
> *** Installation of foreign failed ***
> 
> Removing 'C:/R/rw2010/src/library/foreign.Rcheck/foreign'
> ERROR
> Installation failed
> 
> I can hardly find out what it means... I suspect it may come from a path 
> not well defined or some batch file lacking, but I can hardly guess 
> exactly which ones... The documentation 'writing R extension' pages 8-9 
> (high suspicion that if I could understand it fully, I could solve the 
> problem) is still obscure to me on this subject.
> 
> Can anybody put me on the right track?
> 
> Patrick

Is this a full installation of R (I guess you have not compiled it 
yourself)? If yes, does gcc, perl and friends work?
In the first place, libR.a must be compiled at this point which should 
happen automatically.
But it is really hard to say which of the tools fails exactly.

Uwe Ligges