[R-pkg-devel] Package with external non-Windows C library

[Simon David Jacobs]

Hi all,

I am trying to write an R package that relies on an external C library. My
understanding is that the prefered method is to include the C library in
the `src' folder of the package. I'm running into two problems that may
prevent this package from being distributed on CRAN:

1) The library is a standard configure; make; make install build. I don't
think it will be able to be installed on Windows without cygwin. Does this
automatically disqualify my package from being distributed on CRAN?

2) The library's makefiles have GNU extensions, leading to the following
WARNING with R CMD check:
* checking for GNU extensions in Makefiles ... WARNING
Found the following file(s) containing GNU extensions:
  src/snap-0.4/test/Makefile
  src/snap-0.4/test/Makefile.in
Portable Makefiles do not use GNU extensions such as +=, :=, $(shell),
$(wildcard), ifeq ... endif. See section ŒWriting portable packages¹ in
the ŒWriting R Extensions¹ manual.

Is there a possible workaround here without porting the library? FYI, the
library in question is the SNAP graph code:
http://snap-graph.sourceforge.net/

Thanks in advance.

Best,
Simon

--
Simon Jacobs
Research Programmer
Research Computing Center
University of Chicago
sdjacobs at uchicago.edu