[R-pkg-devel] Unable to load Windows NETIO.SYS and WINSPOOL.DRV DLLs

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 2/14/23 13:26, David Sterratt wrote:
> On Mon, 2023-02-13 at 19:08 +0100, Tomas Kalibera wrote:
>> For reference, there is an old patch for RGtk2 package that I had
>> created when working on Rtools42, though I am not very optimistic it
>> will help in this case:
>>
>> https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/WindowsBuilds/winutf8/ucrt3/r_packages/old_patches/CRAN/RGtk2.diff
> Many thanks. I've not tried this patch yet, but it looks like it's not
> made the development version of RGtk2, which is what I had been working
> with. I will try out the archived RGtk2_2.20.36.3.tar.gz

Yes, it was for the CRAN version (when it was still on CRAN). It is very 
likely you would have to manually update the list of libraries to link 
in this complicated case, after what you get from the script. As it was 
well illustrated also by Ivan's findings.

>> I've added gtk2 libraries to Rtools42 as they were needed by a CRAN
>> package (RGtk2) at that time and available in MXE. Now MXE has gtk3,
>> but
>> not gtk4.
>>
>> If there is a need for gtk4 in a CRAN package, the best way forward
>> would be to contribute gtk4 build configuration to MXE, ideally also
>> after testing it builds as part of Rtools43 (which is a subset of MXE
>> but with some updates not yet upstream). We could then replace gtk2
>> by
>> gtk4 in Rtools. CRAN servers will then get gtk4 simply via updating
>> Rtools.
>>
>> This is only what would be needed for Windows. For macOS, gtk4 would
>> have to be added to the recipes. For Linux, the package should work
>> with
>> gtk4 distributions available in main distributions.
> This is helpful to know, as it suggests that if RGtk2 could be updated
> to work with Gtk4, installed into MXE, and if the Mac recipies could be
> updated, the changes RTools might be accepted, and then RGtk2 (perhaps
> renamed RGtk4) might be uploadable to CRAN.
>
>  From this message, and Uwe's it's clear that the long-term future of
> RGtk2 depends on an update to Gtk4, and I've asked the maintainer about
> what the prospects of that might be:
> https://github.com/lawremi/RGtk2/issues/12

In principle it is easy to add any open-source software with a 
compatible license, but someone has to volunteer to do the work of 
adding it to and maintaining it in the software distributions used, and 
of persuading the maintainers of those distributions to accept it.

Tomas

>
> Best wishes,
>
> David
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336.