[R] Rtools and things dependent on it

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 2/24/24 01:01, David Winsemius wrote:
> On 2/23/24 14:34, avi.e.gross using gmail.com wrote:
>> This may be a dumb question and the answer may make me feel dumber.
>>    
>> I have had trouble for years with R packages wanting Rtools on my machine
>> and not being able to use it. Many packages are fine as binaries are
>> available. I have loaded Rtools and probably need to change my PATH or
>> something.
>
> I suppose making sure that whatever directory holds your Rtools code is
> on your path would be a good idea. I wondered if there's an environment
> variable that could be set, but reading the page on using Rtools did not
> mention one until I got down to the section on building R from source
> which is surely NOT what you want to do.. You should read the
> information on installation and building packages from source.
> https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/howto-R-devel.html which
> includes this sentence:
>
> "It is recommended to use the defaults and install into|c:/rtools43|.
> When done that way, Rtools43 may be used in the same R session which
> installed it or which was started before Rtools43 was installed."
Yes, for regular users, who just want to install R packages on Windows 
from source (packages that include C, C++ of Fortran code), all that is 
needed is to:

- install R from the official installer provided by CRAN

- install Rtools (also from CRAN) for that version of R (so Rtools42 for 
R 4.2, Rtools43 for R 4.3, Rtools44 for R-devel/to become R 4.4)

If both is done accepting the defaults, no additional configuration is 
needed. R will automatically find Rtools when it needs it. One can have 
multiple versions of R and multiple versions of Rtools installed on the 
system, R will find and use the version of Rtools it needs.

Tomas

>
>>    
>> But I recently suggested to someone that they might want to use the tabyl()
>> function in the janitor package that I find helpful. I get a warning when I
>> install it about Rtools but it works fine. When they install it, it fails. I
>> assumed they would get it from CRAN the same way I did as we are both using
>> Windows and from within RSTUDIO.
>>    
>> In the past, I have run into other packages I could not use and just moved
>> on but it seems like time to see if this global problem has a work-around.
>>    
>> And, in particular, I have the latest versions of both R and RSTUDIO which
>> can be a problem when other things are not as up-to-date.
>>    
>> Or, maybe some people with R packages could be convinced to make binaries
>> available in the first place?
> Binaries are automatically produced by CRAN but perhaps you are trying
> to install from some other source? It would help if you could be
> specific about several missing pieces of information: Operating system,
> R version, Rtools version, current location of Rtools, names of packages
> and where they were obtained.
>
>
> Regards and good luck;
>
> David (a.k.a IRTFM)
>
>> Avi
>>
>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> Rhelp is a plain text mailing list. You should configure your email
> client to send only plain-text and NOT html.
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.