[R-pkg-devel] [Learning] the secret of Win[dows C-backed packages]

[Bob Rudis]

Hey folks,

I usually stare in awe at the C-backed packages that rely on eternal
libraries which are super-easy to get working on macOS & *nix _but_ that
also work perfectly on Windows. I fire up Windows (*maybe*) once a month to
test some of my packages but I'm curious as to what I need to do to setup a
more extended toolchain to create libraries such as are found in
https://github.com/rwinlib.

Jeroen (I think others, too) seem to effortlessly package those up and I
fully grok his "anticonf" setup and the 32-bit & 64-bit Windows library
setup. I just can't seem to actually do the building.

Why I'm asking what I'm asking (below) is that I'm working on something for
the $DAYJOB now - https://github.com/hrbrmstr/wand - that requires libmagic
and I kinda, unfortunately, actually need it to also work on Windows (it
usually doesn't matter, but this time some folks who use Windows systems at
work need to use this forthcoming package).

Rather than b[eu]g Jeroen or others for library building/packaging, I'd be
very, keenly interested in learning what else besides Rtools I need to
install to be able to make similar binary bundles to include during
installation (and to have my compiled pkgs work on Windows).

My disdain for Windows and my frustration with the super-limited toolchain
components installed with Rtools is probably contributing to my inability
to solve this on my own (no bash.exe...rly?). I used to use cygwin back in
the day but there are so many cautions in the main R docs abt compatible
versions that I'd rather not spend hours or days figuring out something
that others already have.

One example here is that I actually managed to get one of the libmagic
support packages (the regex library) built and installed on Windows (in the
toolchain /usr/local) but can't get libmagic's `configure` script to
find/use it.

I'm more than willing to write up any copious pointers folks provide into a
detailed, attributed blog post or R Journal article since this is seriously
the only bit holding me back from working on and releasing a ton of other
compilation-required packages to CRAN. I also know I'm not the only one who
gets stalled when trying to get similar things (especially those with full
Boost dependencies) to work on Windows.

thx,

-Bob

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]