R devel - Aug 2002 - Thoughts about Cygwin ?

Let me preface this email by saying that I am very grateful for the
existing Windows version of R. It does an excellent job by providing
a pain- and flawless installation, and a look-and-fell most Windows
users feel comfortable with.  For me,  Windows in its different 
flavours is not something I know, or care, a lot about -- but like
others am forced to work with. The old need-bread-on-the-table thing.

Which brings us to Cygwin. It has also come a fairly long way, and
does now contain an almost complete Unix "user layer" (if you install
the whole bit, not just the default). By "user layer" I mean the
tools,
the networking (I can ssh or telnet in), and even a complete (?) X11
layer -- in fact I can ssh from one NT machine to another and export 
X11 apps back as if I was working between Unix terminals -- not bad.
Even tetex works out of the box to the extend that it support Sweave.

But I tend to spend most of my Windows time in Cygwin.  With R inside 
Xemacs/ESS, my work is fairly OS-agnostic. Every now and then, however,
I feel that it would be nice to have R behave under Cygwin just like it
does under Unix/Linux.  Anybody else here who feels the same?  I don't
think I have the stamina, or for that matter windows/cygwin knowledge, 
to spawn a port, but I would be happy to collaborare as I can with test,
configure.in hacks etc pp

If there is no demand, just tell me to crawl back under my stone. No
hurt feelings. I should be using Debian here anyway... 

Dirk

-- 
According to the latest figures, 43% of all signatures are totally
worthless.   

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To:
r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._

"Dirk Eddelbuettel" <edd@debian.org> writes:
> Xemacs/ESS, my work is fairly OS-agnostic. Every now and then, however,
> I feel that it would be nice to have R behave under Cygwin just like it
> does under Unix/Linux.  Anybody else here who feels the same?  I don't
> think I have the stamina, or for that matter windows/cygwin knowledge, 
> to spawn a port, but I would be happy to collaborare as I can with test,
> configure.in hacks etc pp
> 
> If there is no demand, just tell me to crawl back under my stone. No
> hurt feelings. I should be using Debian here anyway... 
You might be a bit alone there, but on the other hand, cygwin and the
autotools are meant to play nicely with each other, so what happens if
you just try? I'd expect that you'll get a few hiccups from things
like #ifdef Win32 implying !Unix but most should compile cleanly. (I
believe I had configure+make working under Cygwin about 4 or 5 years
ago (no X11, obviously), but "lots of water has been passed under the
bridge" since then).

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
r-devel mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe"
(in the "body", not the subject !)  To:
r-devel-request@stat.math.ethz.ch
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._