[R] tcltk problems

[Rolf Turner]

On 20/11/17 03:15, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> On 19 November 2017 at 12:17, peter dalgaard wrote:
> | Dirk may want to dig in here:
> 
> I respectfully decline.
> 
> R builds fine on every Ubuntu system, and always has.  No bug in R, or
> Ubuntu, or Debian (which would be cup of tea). There is the distro package
> (which may be older if an older distro like 16.04 is used) and there always
> is a current package at CRAN based on Michael's build of my packages. Always.
> 
> Of course a lot of people also locally build R, or maybe R-devel. There is no
> general issue here as best as I can tell.
> 
> | [...] if one user has shot himself in the foot somehow.
> 
> My brief reading suggests that this is the case.

Point of order Mr. Chairman.  It is completely unfair to say that I shot 
myself in the foot.

I did:

sudo apt-get install tcl
sudo apt-get install tcl8.6.dev

and similarly for tk stuff.

I downloaded the source for R-3.4.2 and ran ../R-3.4.2/configure (from a 
"parallel" directory "BldDir".

It stuffed up, apparently being unable to find tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh.

*After* the stuff-up I put in symbolic links in /usr/lib to these file 
in the subdirectories (in which apt-get install apparently placed them.)
This was done according to a suggestion from Berwin Turlach, who found 
that there were similar symbolic links in his file system.  This did not
help however.

Peter Langfelder's suggestion, saying very explicitly what flags I 
should provide to "configure" in respect of the *Config.sh files, *DID* 
work.

I did *not* move any files around.  I did *not* make any alterations to
the configure script.  I did not modify anything, in a "non-standard" 
way --- or even in a standard way!  I just used the software provided, 
in the prescribed manner, and it did not work.

> Nothing good comes off moving files around in /usr as was done.  It creates
> local non-standard circumstances. You cannot expect standardized build to
> anticipate each and every possible non-standard modification.
> 
> This discussion is still on the wrong list too.

Well, OK.  What list *should* it be on?  I was asking for help with an R 
problem.  It seems to me that R-help is appropriate.

cheers,

Rolf Turner

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