[R-pkg-devel] Trouble installing XML on Windows 7 (64-bit)

[Avraham Adler]

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 12:02 PM, Haigh, Rowan
<Rowan.Haigh at dfo-mpo.gc.ca> wrote:
> Hi Duncan,
>
> Well I finally managed to install XML from source in Windows under R-devel. Basically it was a clue provided by user wlandau-lilly (last message on https://github.com/igraph/igraph/issues/915), and discussions between Gábor and user stewid (https://github.com/krlmlr-archive/r-portable/issues/3#issuecomment-72928971) that lead to success.
>
> 1. Download local323.zip from http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/Rtools/libs.html ;
>
> 2. Copy the files in local323.zip/include/libxml2/libxml/ directory to R-devel/include/libxml/ ;
>
> 3. Copy entire contents of local323.zip (directories include/ and lib/) to new directory C:/Apps/R/Rtools/local323/ ;
>
> 4. Change line 31 of two files `Makeconf' (in C:/Apps/R/Rdev/etc/i386/ and C:/Apps/R/Rdev/etc/x64/),  from `#LOCAL_SOFT' to `LOCAL_SOFT = C:/Apps/R/Rtools/local323'  ;
>
> 5. In R-devel, issue command `install.packages("XML", type = "source")'.
>

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. I've been building R from source on
Windows for years, although XML is one of the three packages I usually
build from binary (the other two being stringi and BH).

As per the instructions (which also tell you where to get the extras)
[1], you don't need to change MakeConf. You need to copy Mkrules.dist
to Mkrules.local and set LOCAL_SOFT to the directory you need and then
ensure EXT_LIBS = $(LOCAL_SOFT) is active. And yes, you need to put
the extra goodies in RLocalSoft (EXCEPT for Tcl), and that includes
Curl and ICU if you want to include that support.

Thanks,

Avi

[1] https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html#Building-from-source