[R] config args for Rmpfr to link to mpfr and gmp?

[Martin Maechler]

Dear Seija,

>>>>> Seija Sirkiä <seija.sirkia at csc.fi>
>>>>>     on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 10:01:05 +0200 writes:

    > Hello,
    > Sorry to bother with you with this, I'll be very brief: How do I communicate to the Rmpfr package that the (correct versions of) mpfr and gmp libraries are somewhere else than its installation assumes? Pointing me to documentation is fine, I haven't been able to find any beyond the README which tells me that sudo apt-getting the libraries should do. That is not an option in my case.

Sure.

The package has a configure script (auto generated from
configure.ac by GNU autoconf).

Did you see and study the result of

  ./Rmpfr/configure --help

?
It points you (among other) to arguments

  --libdir=DIR            object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib]
  --includedir=DIR        C header files [PREFIX/include]

which I think (but did not check) should be sufficient.
I'd work for a solution by
1) manually find the correct way to call that configure script.
2) Once you found that, you should also be able to do this from R
   by correct setting of the arguments

  configure.args
  configure.vars
  INSTALL.opts

of the

   install.packages()

function.

As I am *not* an expert on the subject of  C compiler / library
/ include files (aka "headers") tweaking on all the many different platforms,
and even more importantly, as this question is of general
interest and so its answer is, too, I'm CC'ing to the R-help
mailing lsit and ask you to use 'reply to all' such that the
topic is kept and dealt with on R-help. 

I hope you'll enjoy working with the Rmpfr R package,
with best regards,

Martin Maechler
ETH Zurich