R devel - Feb 2010 - wcstombs error when compiling package with Debian/Ubuntu

Dear Debian/Ubuntu experts,

For the second time users of my BioC package reported problems when 
trying to compile it on Debian/Ubuntu.

The error is always the same: "'wcstombs' was not declared in this 
scope", see:
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2010-February/031739.html
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2009-August/029192.html

Since I have no problems compiling my package on OpenSUSE11.1, MacOS X 
and WinXP, I assume that maybe some development package may not be 
installed?

Do you know what might be the reason for the compilation error on 
Debian/Ubuntu?
Which development headers/packages (glibc-headers, glibc-kernheaders??) 
need to be installed on Debian/Ubuntu?

Best regards
Christian
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
C.h.r.i.s.t.i.a.n   S.t.r.a.t.o.w.a
V.i.e.n.n.a           A.u.s.t.r.i.a
e.m.a.i.l:        cstrato at aon.at
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._

Christian,

On 10 February 2010 at 22:02, cstrato wrote:
| Dear Debian/Ubuntu experts,
| 
| For the second time users of my BioC package reported problems when 
| trying to compile it on Debian/Ubuntu.
| 
| The error is always the same: "'wcstombs' was not declared in
this
| scope", see:
| https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2010-February/031739.html
| https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2009-August/029192.html
| 
| Since I have no problems compiling my package on OpenSUSE11.1, MacOS X 
| and WinXP, I assume that maybe some development package may not be 
| installed?
| 
| Do you know what might be the reason for the compilation error on 
| Debian/Ubuntu?
| Which development headers/packages (glibc-headers, glibc-kernheaders??) 
| need to be installed on Debian/Ubuntu?

There is a dedicated list for Debian / Ubuntu called r-sig-debian which is a
better target for such questions.

I have never encountered or knowingly used wcstombs, though I do have a
manual page for it.  Could you provide a small self-contained example that
works for you to see if I can build it?

Dirk

-- 
  Registration is open for the 2nd International conference R / Finance 2010
  See http://www.RinFinance.com for details, and see you in Chicago in April!

Such errors are common when people use older versions of g++ to write 
their C++ code.  Later versions of g++ have somewhat stricter 
conformance to the C++ standards and catch some lax usage: we've seen 
it quite a lot for g++ 4.4.x and even more for pre-4.5.0.  In all the 
cases I have seen this message indicates a missing header.

wcstombs is a C99 function declared in <stdlib.h>: given that this 
looks like a C++ error message, did you include its C++ version, 
<cstdlib>?

Note that Mac OS X and (32-bit) WinXP are using g++ 4.2.x.  Also, what 
other headers a particular header includes is OS-dependent (and maybe 
even compiler-dependent): we have had a lot of trouble recently with 
<stdint.h> that some OSes (especially MinGW32) include from more 
common headers and some do not.

So this may be an OS issue but a compiler-version issue is more 
likely.


On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, cstrato wrote:
> Dear Debian/Ubuntu experts,
>
> For the second time users of my BioC package reported problems when trying
to
> compile it on Debian/Ubuntu.
>
> The error is always the same: "'wcstombs' was not declared in
this scope",
> see:
>
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2010-February/031739.html
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/bioconductor/2009-August/029192.html
>
> Since I have no problems compiling my package on OpenSUSE11.1, MacOS X and 
> WinXP, I assume that maybe some development package may not be installed?
>
> Do you know what might be the reason for the compilation error on 
> Debian/Ubuntu?
> Which development headers/packages (glibc-headers, glibc-kernheaders??)
need
> to be installed on Debian/Ubuntu?
>
> Best regards
> Christian
> _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
> C.h.r.i.s.t.i.a.n   S.t.r.a.t.o.w.a
> V.i.e.n.n.a           A.u.s.t.r.i.a
> e.m.a.i.l:        cstrato at aon.at
> _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595