[R-sig-Geo] need a Windows binary for Rcartogram from omegahat

[Alex Mandel]

Mark Daniel Ward wrote:
> Greetings!  I'm about to have a lab for my students using the Rcartogram
> library.
> 
> I cannot get the Rcartogram library installed on the Windows PC's,
> because they do not have the fftw library pre-installed.  To compile
> from source, the students also appear to need to have several auxiliary
> pieces of software installed (such as basics, including perl and bash
> and gcc).  This is perhaps too much to expect from my students.  (I have
> these on my Mac, but they will not have them on their Windows computers.)
> 
> Has anyone already built a Windows binary of the Rcartogram library that
> includes the fftw as part of the installation?  I checked earlier in the
> year on the mailing lists, and the answer was negative, but I'm very
> eager to know if anyone can help in this regard.  We are failing
> miserably at building the Windows source for Rcartogram.
> 
> Thank you in advance for any quick advice that you can offer.  I
> appreciate it very much.
> 
> P.S.  The computer staff already installed the fftw library for me on
> the Mac OS X lab computers using the following commands, suggested
> kindly to me on the R for Mac mailing list:
> curl -O http://r.research.att.com/libs/fftw-3.2.2-darwin9-bin4.tar.gz
> sudo tar fvxz fftw-3.2.2-darwin9-bin4.tar.gz -C /
> Afterwards, I am able to successfully install the Rcartogram library
> from source using:
> install.packages("Rcartogram", repos = "http://www.omegahat.org/R", type
> = "source")
> 
> Mark
> 


As an indirect answer/back-up plan if you can't get the windows mess
built you could try the latest Live GIS DVD/Virtual Machine from OSGeo.
http://download.osgeo.org/livedvd/

VirtualBox, VMWarePlayer etc are all available for free to run the vm on
a windows desktop.

R is already installed, and if you can do the library install once on
the vm before giving it to the students or provide a script to the
install I can help you make sure it works.

Alex