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

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 13 August 2016 at 18:19, Bob Rudis wrote:
| Aye. I rly need to get back to my security & privacy "R" post. The
| slipstreaming in of these binaries is somewhat frightening. Almost as
| frightening as being stuck on Windows ��

Right.

And the Windows side of that so-called "anticonf" [1] pattern more-or-less
establishes itself as "best practice" -- which may be defensible realizing
[2] that Windows is a fairly terrible development environment lacking any
kind of modularity or packages [3].  But then we all need to wake up, realize
it is 2016 and we may be providing binaries for maybe up to a millions users
on that platform.  By what you call "slipstreaming". Seriously?

Dirk

[1] I personally dislike that name a lot, even though I generally enjoy puns.
[2] See my earlier post in this thread.
[3] At the system level; I am unfamiliar with nu-get but add-ons failed before

| On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 13:09 Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
| 
| 
|     I don't think there is a good "generally applicable" solution.  We have a
|     bunch of hacks. Below are three quickly picked examples from packages of
|     mine:
| 
|     RQuantLib relies on environment variables and a 'library that needs to just
|     be there' on the build host:
| 
|        ## The environment variable QUANTLIB_ROOT has to point to an existing
|     build of QuantLib
|        ## With R 2.12.0 and later, we also support 32 and 64 bit builds and
|     need to differentiate
|        PKG_CPPFLAGS=-I$(QUANTLIB_ROOT) -I../inst/include -I. -I$(BOOSTLIB)
|        PKG_CXXFLAGS=$(SHLIB_OPENMP_CFLAGS) -fpermissive
|        PKG_LIBS=-L$(QUANTLIB_ROOT)/lib${R_ARCH} -lQuantLib $
|     (SHLIB_OPENMP_CFLAGS)
| 
|     RcppGSL does the same
| 
|        ## This assumes that the LIB_GSL variable points to working GSL
|     libraries
|        PKG_CPPFLAGS=-I$(LIB_GSL)/include -I../inst/include
|        PKG_LIBS=-L$(LIB_GSL)/lib -lgsl -lgslcblas
| 
|     Rblpapi copies a library (for which we have 'free' binaries but no source)
|     in
|     from GitHub:
| 
|        ## target to ensure tar.gz files get unpacked
|        ## the opening '@' ensures operations are executed 'quietly'
|        ## in order to see commands as they happens add a 'v' to the tar and cp
|     commands
|        ## curl has '-k' flag to suppress certificate warnings
|        blpLibrary:
|                     @if [ ! -d ../inst ]; then mkdir -p ../inst; fi
|                     @if [ ! -d ../blp/win/${FLV} ]; then mkdir -p ../blp/win/$
|     {FLV}; fi
|                     @if [ ! -f ../blp/win/${FLV}/blpHeaders.tar.gz ]; then curl
|     -s -k -L -O https://github.com/Rblp/blp/raw/master/headers/windows/
|     blpHeaders.tar.gz; mv blpHeaders.tar.gz ../blp/win/${FLV}; tar xfz ../blp/
|     win/${FLV}/blpHeaders.tar.gz -C ../inst; fi
|                     @if [ ! -f ../blp/win/${FLV}/blpLibrary.tar.gz ]; then curl
|     -s -k -L -O https://github.com/Rblp/blp/raw/master/win${WIN}/
|     blpLibrary.tar.gz; mv blpLibrary.tar.gz ../blp/win/${FLV}; tar xfz ../blp/
|     win/${FLV}/blpLibrary.tar.gz; fi
|                     @if [ ! -d ${FLV} ]; then mkdir -p ${FLV}; fi
|                     @cp blpapi3_${WIN}.dll ${FLV}
|                     @if [ ! -d ../inst/libs/${FLV} ]; then mkdir -p ../inst/
|     libs/${FLV}; fi
|                     @cp blpapi3_${WIN}.dll ../inst/libs/${FLV}
| 
| 
|     None of that really generalizes well.  The last bit, much like the
|     so-called
|     anticonf pattern, is more or less a non-standard practice exposing a
|     security
|     risk by copying in code from a semi-random location which could be hijacked
|     or man-in-the-middle'd.
| 
|     Really all this is just pretending that Windows is an envrionment on which
|     you can deploy proper build systems -- similar to what we are used from the
|     likes of dpkg/apt/yum or brew.  But in all honesty you just can't.
| 
|     So I would not try to aim for something overly general.  It is Windows
|     after all.
| 
|     Dirk
| 
|     --
|     http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org
| 

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org