[R-pkg-devel] Solaris build of package with Rcpp dependency

[Blätte, Andreas]

Dear colleagues,

I maintain the package called ‘RcppCWB’ that depends on ‘Rcpp’. Using C++/Rcpp, it exposes the functionality of the ‘Corpus Workbench’ (CWB), a set of tools written in C to create and query large, linguistically annotated corpora.

So far, the package can be built on all major platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows), but there is a recurring ERROR for Solaris. Even though I do not anybody who actually works with Solaris, I started to work on Solaris portability. The state of affairs is a branch “solaris” of the package at GitHub: https://github.com/PolMine/RcppCWB/tree/solaris

I manage to compile the package without errors using the VMWare Solaris image prepared by Jeroen Ooms. However, it is necessary to switch to the GNU toolchain (gmake, gcc, g++). Using Solaris make, and the compilers included in Oracle Developer Studio does not work. It does not seem to be a flaw of my code. I gather, it is a well-known fact that packages using Rcpp require the GNU toolchain, see the Details for r-patched-solaris-86: https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/bdr/Rconfig/r-patched-solaris-x86

So there are certain known modifications of config.site / Makeconf that trigger using the GNU toolchain. However, I do not know, how to require using this when I submit the next Release of RcppCWB to CRAN:

  *   Will it be enough to state SystemRequirements: GNU make?
  *   Will it be enough to have Rcpp in the dependencies?
  *   Or will the CRAN team react on what I write in cran-comments.md?

To avoid a trial-and-error process, I tried to check the package on r-hub. But here I get an error, because Rcpp is not present on the r-hub Solaris server. This will not be the error I encounter on CRAN servers.

So my question is, how do I require usage of the GNU toolchain for the Solaris build/check of a package at CRAN.  Thanks for your advice!

Kind regards
Andreas (Blätte)

--
Prof. Dr. Andreas Blaette
Professor of Public Policy
University of Duisburg-Essen
www.polmine.de<http://www.polmine.de>
www.github.com/PolMine<http://www.github.com/PolMine>



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