R devel - Feb 2010 - questions as to building R from source under Windows

Hi R-devels,

yesterday, on a new computer, in order to check my installation
of "The Windows Toolset", I tried building R from source under
Windows (in fact under Windows 7) --- and in the end succeeded.

Some minor issues though (which I think should not be Windows 7
 issues) which might be of more general interest:

(1) TMPDIR on a different drive:
--- not sure whether this was my fault or you could do anything
about it: On my system, I have a separate drive for temp (i.e. E:),
and had this set in a corresponding TMPDIR environment variable.
During the build process of R, I had difficulties with this,
which were only resolved when I created a tmp folder on the same
drive (i.e. C:) and set environment variable TMPDIR to this new
folder. Is this a known issue /can you reproduce this?
If this is a more general issue, you might want to mention this
in R-admin / or the documentation to Rtools.

(2) TCL:
Although I set the path to TCL in MkRules, line 26 to
   C:\Program Files\R\Tcl   , in step    make rinstaller
I ran into problems, because the build process was assuming
(hard-coded, it seems) the Tcl files to reside in
../../../Tcl (from gnuwin32 folder, which is not the above
set path). Did I miss something? Everything worked fine
after I had copied the /Tcl folder to ../../../Tcl ...

(3) JPEG
Meanwhile the most recent version of jpeg sources is v8,
which is what I downloaded; I succeeded in building R with
this version after a little manual change in bitmap/Makefile .
-> Could you change line 10 in bitmap/Makefile so that it
would branch not only according to whether version was v7 or
not but rather according to whether version was larger or equal
to v7 or not / or set up a v8 alternative?

(4) Did not work for me: build R on D:
            --- a Vista / Windows 7 issue?
In the end I succeeded with my build on drive C: (NTFS formatted)
giving the current user full access privileges to the installation
folders; before, in order to circumvent these privilege issues,
I tried building R on a different drive (D:) which in my case is
formatted as FAT32; somehow I got stuck with this, though;
(my Rtools are on C:). Is this a known issue /can you reproduce this?

Best, Peter

On 01.02.2010 12:08, Peter Ruckdeschel wrote:
> Hi R-devels,
>
> yesterday, on a new computer, in order to check my installation
> of "The Windows Toolset", I tried building R from source under
> Windows (in fact under Windows 7) --- and in the end succeeded.
>
> Some minor issues though (which I think should not be Windows 7
>   issues) which might be of more general interest:
>
> (1) TMPDIR on a different drive:
> --- not sure whether this was my fault or you could do anything
> about it: On my system, I have a separate drive for temp (i.e. E:),
> and had this set in a corresponding TMPDIR environment variable.
> During the build process of R, I had difficulties with this,
> which were only resolved when I created a tmp folder on the same
> drive (i.e. C:) and set environment variable TMPDIR to this new
> folder. Is this a known issue /can you reproduce this?
> If this is a more general issue, you might want to mention this
> in R-admin / or the documentation to Rtools.

If your setup is correct according to the manuals, it may be a problem 
in one of the cygwin tools. A more detailed description to analyse it 
would be appreciated.


> (2) TCL:
> Although I set the path to TCL in MkRules, line 26 to
>     C:\Program Files\R\Tcl   , in step    make rinstaller
> I ran into problems, because the build process was assuming
> (hard-coded, it seems) the Tcl files to reside in
> ../../../Tcl (from gnuwin32 folder, which is not the above
> set path). Did I miss something? Everything worked fine
> after I had copied the /Tcl folder to ../../../Tcl ...

Citing the "R Installation and Administration" manual:
The Tcl/Tk support files are in a zip file at 
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/Rtools/: unzip this in R HOME, and it will 
add directory tree ?R_HOME/Tcl?.

> (3) JPEG
> Meanwhile the most recent version of jpeg sources is v8,
> which is what I downloaded; I succeeded in building R with
> this version after a little manual change in bitmap/Makefile .
> ->  Could you change line 10 in bitmap/Makefile so that it
> would branch not only according to whether version was v7 or
> not but rather according to whether version was larger or equal
> to v7 or not / or set up a v8 alternative?

Well tested patches for the Makefile, MkRules and documentation 
(including manuals) are welcome.


> (4) Did not work for me: build R on D:
>              --- a Vista / Windows 7 issue?
> In the end I succeeded with my build on drive C: (NTFS formatted)
> giving the current user full access privileges to the installation
> folders; before, in order to circumvent these privilege issues,
> I tried building R on a different drive (D:) which in my case is
> formatted as FAT32; somehow I got stuck with this, though;
> (my Rtools are on C:). Is this a known issue /can you reproduce this?
I build R and packages on d:/ without any problems. I do not think that 
the drive letter is the issues here. It may be some new MS security 
policy on FAT drives - or whatever. I have not used FAT formatted drives 
for serious work for at least a decade now.

Best wishes,
Uwe


> Best, Peter
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

Yet another clarification:

[snip]
>> (4) Did not work for me: build R on D:
>>              --- a Vista / Windows 7 issue?
>> In the end I succeeded with my build on drive C: (NTFS formatted)
>> giving the current user full access privileges to the installation
>> folders; before, in order to circumvent these privilege issues,
>> I tried building R on a different drive (D:) which in my case is
>> formatted as FAT32; somehow I got stuck with this, though;
>> (my Rtools are on C:). Is this a known issue /can you reproduce this?
> 
> I build R and packages on d:/ without any problems. I do not think that
> the drive letter is the issues here. It may be some new MS security
> policy on FAT drives - or whatever. I have not used FAT formatted drives
> for serious work for at least a decade now.
At the end of the day, after having set the "right" TMPDIR environment
variable and copied the Tcl folder as indicated in R-admin.html,
it was /not/ a FAT32 issue: I managed to build it now on D:\
(although I agree with Uwe that this is probably not what you want to
do if NTFS works...)

best, Peter

> Yet another clarification:
> 
> [snip]
> 
>>> (4) Did not work for me: build R on D:
>>>              --- a Vista / Windows 7 issue?
>>> In the end I succeeded with my build on drive C: (NTFS formatted)
>>> giving the current user full access privileges to the installation
>>> folders; before, in order to circumvent these privilege issues,
>>> I tried building R on a different drive (D:) which in my case is
>>> formatted as FAT32; somehow I got stuck with this, though;
>>> (my Rtools are on C:). Is this a known issue /can you reproduce
this?
>>
>> I build R and packages on d:/ without any problems. I do not think that
>> the drive letter is the issues here. It may be some new MS security
>> policy on FAT drives - or whatever. I have not used FAT formatted
drives
>> for serious work for at least a decade now.
> 
> At the end of the day, after having set the "right" TMPDIR
environment
> variable and copied the Tcl folder as indicated in R-admin.html,
> it was /not/ a FAT32 issue: I managed to build it now on D:\
> (although I agree with Uwe that this is probably not what you want to
> do if NTFS works...)
> 
together with this --- in the end --- still a little correction for
R-admin, section 3.1.7:

If you really pursue stepwise as indicated after "This works by building
all the parts in the sequence",

it must be     make rpackages   (not rpackage)

and you will need to insert a

    make -C ../../po -f Makefile.win

before   make rinstaller

Best, Peter