[R-SIG-Mac] library not found for -lX11

[Simon Urbanek]

On Nov 28, 2012, at 7:38 PM, Jakson Alves de Aquino wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I submitted a package to CRAN:
> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/vimcom/index.html
> 
> It builds on Linux without warnings, but there is the following error
> on Mac OS X:
> 
>    ld: library not found for -lX11
>    collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
>    make: *** [vimcom.so] Error 1
>    ERROR: compilation failed for package 'vimcom'
> 
> The complete log is here:
> http://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macosx-ix86/vimcom-00install.html
> 
> I know that I have to edit the src/Makevars file, but I don't know
> what I should put there and I don't have access to any machine running
> Mac OS X to make tests. Any help will be appreciated.
> 

The issue is not Mac specific at all. A couple points: you cannot assume X11 because R can be built with or without X11 - in fact most recent OS X comes without X11 so requiring it may limit the availability of your package. If you really require X11 you'll have to declare that in your DESCRIPTION file. Furthermore, R doesn't expose X11 flags to packages so you'll have to write a configure test to determine proper X1 flags for your package. Just adding -lX11 to Makevars doesn't work. See the autoconf documentation - there are typically tests for X11 that can be re-used (R uses them, too). This may also require special flags depending on the configuration (autoconf provides --x-libraries and --x-includes for that). I don't know what you really need - ideally, you should make any X11 code conditional on the availability of X11 --  I don't know whether that is a basic requirement for your package or not, so how to proceed from here may depend on that.

Cheers,
Simon


> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> Jakson Alves de Aquino
> Federal University of Ceará
> Social Sciences Department
> www.lepem.ufc.br/aquino.php
> 
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