[R-pkg-devel] SystemRequirements: Berkeley DB STL

[Toby Hocking]

Hi Dirk thanks for the helpful response.
On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 5:09 AM Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org> wrote:

>
> On 23 October 2018 at 14:02, Toby Hocking wrote:
> | I would like to put the https://github.com/tdhock/PeakSegDisk package on
> | CRAN. This package needs Berkeley DB C++ Standard Template Library. What
> do
> | I need to do to get this package (with compiled mac/windows binaries) on
> | CRAN?
> |
> | This C++ library is relatively easy to install
> |
> https://github.com/tdhock/PeakSegPipeline/wiki/FAQ#installing-berkeleydb-stl
> | but probably too big (tar.gz source code is 43MB) to include in the R
> | package, so I have indicated this external library dependency in the
> | SystemRequirements field of DESCRIPTION. I have also put
> PKG_LIBS=-ldb_stl
> | in my src/Makevars. Is that OK?
>
> In short, no.
>
> This is a messy topic, but in the briefest of nutshells you have an
> external
> library here which needs linking.  That makes it complicated.
>
> A short road map (in increasing order of complexity) about the situation:
>
>
>  - a small external library shipped just as headers, eg catch2, is easiest:
>
>    => just include the header file
>    => maybe even package the header file up in a package so that other
>       packages can use it
>
>
>  - a small external library ie just a few files is doable with little work:
>
>    => just include it in your src/ directory
>    => or maybe one level below src/ and have Makevars build it
>       (which is something I just did to one of my packages)
>
>
>  - a small-to-medium library typically installed externally gets harder
>
>    => you are at the mercy of CRAN to have THAT LIBRARY on ALL of their
> systems
>    => or if you can do the work, install it via your package (nloptr does
> that)
>       (nloptr is extra-special because it then also exports 10 or so C
> entry points)
>
>
>  - a large and complex library is really difficult
>
>    => like the last point, only worse
>
>
> These (three to) four approaches could be split up further, eg by C versus
> C++, or by 'do you want other CRAN packages to use it too or not' etc.
>
> Here, you are at the last point. You have library that is
>   a) large
>   b) reasonably uncommon
>   c) available in some but not other places
>
> As your README states, it exists for Debian/Ubuntu so you could (privately)
> ask Kurt to install it on his machines which he will probably do.  A start.
>

I have emailed Kurt about this.


> But then you still need Windows (where Uwe is generally equally helpful,
> but
> not everything builds on Windows, he has zero spare time to build it for
> you
> and we have no mechanism to get it to him -- or maybe we do via Jeroen's
> rwinlibs -- to be checked). So a possible roadblock.
>

Judging from Uwe's non-response to my email requests, Jeroen's rwinlibs may
be a better option -- but what is that? I am not familiar with rwinlib.
Where are the docs?


>
> And then you need macOS.  I will not say much more in order to remain
> polite
> and civil, but if you check the archives of this list and r-devel you will
> find me _begging_ a few weeks ago to be given a handle to turn off builds
> of
> a package of mine because it could never have its libraries on macOS yet it
> would still always attempt to build on macOS yielding me two ERROR and a
> "bad
> package" stigma.  I still have that problem with a few other packages of
> mine
> lacking a macOS library at CRAN, and it is "difficult" to understate by
> some
> order.
>
I emailed Simon about this and he added to his recipes so hopefully that
will work,
https://github.com/s-u/recipes/commit/b61ee4d82b58f0114475c790f0844f98b918be01


>
> Oh, and did I mention the joy that is Solaris?
>
In theory Solaris should not be hard -- the installation from source is
pretty much a standard configure && make && make install.

curl -OL http://download.oracle.com/berkeley-db/db-6.2.23.NC.tar.gz
tar xf db-6.2.23.NC.tar.gz
cd db-6.2.23.NC/build_unix
../dist/configure --prefix=$HOME --enable-stl
make
make install


BTW in response to Hong: sorry for linking to the wrong wiki page -- in
fact PeakSegDisk does NOT depend on any UCSC tools. Just Berkeley DB STL
C++ library.

>
> In short, this is complicated. See fortunes::fortune(356) (h/t Doug Bates).
>
> Dirk
>
> --
> http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
>

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