[R-SIG-Mac] The Equivalent of pkg-config for Frameworks

[Dominic Steinitz]

Hi Simon,

Thanks very much for this. Very much appreciated. I will communicate with the package authors but they only support windows and linux at the moment. I was hoping it would be straightforward to get it to work for Mac OS and then send them a patch. From what you say, it shouldn’t be too difficult. I will try next week but I may need a bit more help.

BTW the package is really cool. It allows you to call R from Haskell in an integrated way. I need to be able to perform non linear least squares and there is no existing library in Haskell to do this; enter R :-)

Thanks once again,

Dominic Steinitz
dominic at steinitz.org
http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com

On 30 May 2014, at 15:36, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:

> 
> On May 30, 2014, at 6:07 AM, Dominic Steinitz <dominic at steinitz.org> wrote:
> 
>> My googling skills are failing. I want to install a package which relies on R. This currently works on windows and linux. When I try it on my macbook I get told
>> 
>>> Configuring H-0.1.0.0... 
>>> Warning: Instead of 'ghc-options: -cpp' use 'extensions: CPP' 
>>> cabal: The pkg-config package 'libR' version >=3.0 is required but it 
>>> could 
>>> not be found. 
>>> Failed to install H-0.1.0.0 
>>> Updating documentation index /Users/dom/Library/Haskell/doc/index.html 
>>> cabal: Error: some packages failed to install: 
>>> H-0.1.0.0 failed during the configure step. The exception was: 
>>> ExitFailure 1 
>> 
>> But I have R installed
>> 
>>> $ R --version 
>>> R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing" 
>>> Copyright (C) 2013 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing 
>>> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit) 
>> 
>> 
>> It seems the installer for the package uses pkg-config to check for the existence of R.
>> 
>>> $ pkg-config --version
>>> 0.28
>> 
>> 
>> It finds e.g. the gnu scientific library
>> 
>>> $ pkg-config  --libs gsl
>>> -L/usr/local/Cellar/gsl/1.16/lib -lgsl -lgslcblas -lm
>> 
>> 
>> But can’t find R
>> 
>>> $ pkg-config  --libs R
>>> Package R was not found in the pkg-config search path.
>>> Perhaps you should add the directory containing `R.pc'
>>> to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
>>> No package 'R' found
>> 
>> 
>> On my installation, R lives in
>> 
>>> /Library/Frameworks/R.framework
>> 
>> In order to use pkg-config, it seems I need a .pc file somewhere but I can’t find one.
>> 
>> Can someone either tell me where the .pc file is for R or alternatively how to tell the installer where to find R?
>> 
> 
> Mac OS X has no pkg-config, so that's why native version of R has no R.pc. It seems that whatever you are compiling doesn't have native OS X support. Since you are already mixing brewed and native code, you may as well just use brew entirely since you've already entered murky waters. I didn't test, but I would presume that it gives you a non-framework installation of R which may provide R.pc.
> 
> How to tell the installer to find R is a question you should pose to the authors of whatever you're trying to compile, R has no control over that. Note that the canonical way to obtain R flags is via `R CMD config` so I'd say this is a bug in the package you're compiling - it should be using R CMD config --cppflags and R CMD config --ldflags instead of pkg-config -- it may use pkg-config as a fallback, but is should support R CMD config in the first place.
> 
> Finally, you could hand-craft libR.pc which points to the native installation of R - it could look something like
> 
> rhome=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
> rincludedir=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Headers
> 
> Name: libR
> Description: R as a library
> Version: 3.1.0
> Libs: -F/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/.. -framework R -llzma -lz -licucore -lm -liconv
> Cflags: -I${rincludedir}
> Libs.private:
> 
> Untested and, again, the proper way is to use
> 
> R CMD config --cppflags
> R CMD config --ldflags
> 
> Cheers,
> Simon
> 
> 
> 
>> Many thanks
>> 
>> Dominic Steinitz
>> dominic at steinitz.org
>> http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com
>> 
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>