[R] advice on package devel with external libs

[Murat Tasan]

hi all - i'm working on an R package that makes use of my own shared
library written in C.
but i also am making use of another C-written library.
(my package is for facilitating biological namespace translations via
online (i.e. up-to-date) biological databases.)

problem is, the library i'm using is not a standard library (i.e. i
doubt it will be installed on most users' machines).
i also don't think too many users will be particularly adept in
installing a shared library.
for users with a sysadmin, it can be done easily enough, but on local
installations i fear most will be incapable of properly installing/
locating the library so my code can link to it during compile time.
(in case anyone was wondering, the library in question is a
lightweight JSON parser... yes i know there are existing R packages
for this, but they are *very* slow for large JSON object coding/
encoding.)

how have folks dealt with this in the past with R packages?
i've thought about wrapping the other library itself as a separate R
package which basically does nothing on installation other than
compile and put the libraries a predictable location... but this seems
rather silly (and may violate the JSON parser package's license).

thanks for any input on this,

-murat