[R] shared library configuration; Gnome GUI

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This seems to have gone unanswered.

The difference in building R as a shared library is in the R-admin manual.
Quick summary: you slowed R down by ca 15%.

Both my FC3 systems build gnomeGUI.  In any case, the information about 
gnome version is also in the R-admin manual, and FC3 has

gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-44
gnome-libs-devel-1.4.1.2.90-44

More likely you do not have these at all than you have `2.0X'

On Fri, 22 Apr 2005, Paul Johnson wrote:

> Hello, everybody:
>
> On a Fedora Core 3 Linux system, I built R-2.1 using an updated version of 
> the spec file that was used to make the RPMs for version 2.0.1 on the CRAN 
> system.  The build was fine, and packages updates perfectly.  Thanks!
>
> Then I got curious about the package gnomeGUI. While trying to build that, I 
> see errors
> =============
> * Installing *Frontend* package 'gnomeGUI' ...
> Using R Installation in R_HOME=/usr/lib/R
> R was not built as a shared library
> Need a shared R library
> ERROR: configuration failed for package 'gnomeGUI'
> ===================
>
>
> So then I look back at re-building R, and see
>
>> ./configure --help
>
> I see these two items that seem to contradict each other.  Why is the first 
> defaulted to "no" and the second one "yes"?  What's the difference?
>
> --enable-R-shlib        build R as a shared library [no]
>
> [...snip...]
>
>  --enable-shared[=PKGS]
>                          build shared libraries [default=yes]
>
> I built with --enable-R-shlib and all seemed fine.
>
> Anyway, it turns out it was all for nothing, because the Gnome package wants 
> the Gnome-1.4 libraries, whereas I have 2.0X. So, I'm going to forget about 
> gnomeGUI, but I wonder: did I do any harm by building R with the non-default 
> --enable-R-shared?  Can it potentially break something?
>
> As far as I can see, new R runs great.

-- 
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)
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