The R Installation and Administration manual section A.1 states that glibc
should provide a suitable iconv function, but I can't get R's configure
script to accept/validate iconv on a Linux platform I need to support using
glibc 2.20.
Is glibc is actually compatible (and/or is gnu libiconv essentially the only
path)?
If glibc should work, what should I check to troubleshoot my environment?
The configure error I get is
checking iconv.h usability... yes
checking iconv.h presence... yes
checking for iconv.h... yes
checking for iconv... yes
checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1",
"ASCII" and "UCS-*"... no
configure: error: a suitable iconv is essential
My full list of installed glibc / libc packages is
glibc-binary-localedata-en-gb - 2.20-r0
glibc-binary-localedata-en-us - 2.20-r0
glibc-gconv - 2.20-r0
glibc-gconv-utf-16 - 2.20-r0
glibc-locale-en-gb - 2.20-r0
libc6 - 2.20-r0
libc6-dev - 2.20-r0
libc6-extra-nss - 2.20-r0
libc6-thread-db - 2.20-r0
This is for a custom Linux build, not a major distro, so unfortunately I cannot
use pre-packaged configurations.
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On 15/05/2015 01:19, Smith, Virgil wrote:> The R Installation and Administration manual section A.1 states that glibc should provide a suitable iconv function, but I can't get R's configure script to accept/validate iconv on a Linux platform I need to support using glibc 2.20. > > Is glibc is actually compatible (and/or is gnu libiconv essentially the only path)?R is built daily on Fedora 21 Linux which uses glibc 2.20 and has been for at least a decade with that and earlier versions of glibc. No problems with installing using glibc have been reported in all that time (and many dialects of Linux have been used successfully).> If glibc should work, what should I check to troubleshoot my environment? > > The configure error I get is > checking iconv.h usability... yes > checking iconv.h presence... yes > checking for iconv.h... yes > checking for iconv... yes > checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1", "ASCII" and "UCS-*"... no > configure: error: a suitable iconv is essentialYou look in config.log for the details we cannot even guess at.> > My full list of installed glibc / libc packages is > glibc-binary-localedata-en-gb - 2.20-r0 > glibc-binary-localedata-en-us - 2.20-r0 > glibc-gconv - 2.20-r0 > glibc-gconv-utf-16 - 2.20-r0 > glibc-locale-en-gb - 2.20-r0 > libc6 - 2.20-r0 > libc6-dev - 2.20-r0 > libc6-extra-nss - 2.20-r0 > libc6-thread-db - 2.20-r0 > > This is for a custom Linux build, not a major distro, so unfortunately I cannot use pre-packaged configurations.-- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford 1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK
> > Is glibc is actually compatible (and/or is gnu libiconv essentially the only path)? > > R is built daily on Fedora 21 Linux which uses glibc 2.20 and has been for at least > a decade with that and earlier versions of glibc. No problems with installing > using glibc have been reported in all that time (and many dialects of Linux have > been used successfully).Thank you for confirming that something stranger than my libiconv implementation selection must have been (and was) wrong with my environment. Extracting the relevant test from the configure script and some manual hacking showed that iconv_open worked for all of the tests except those involving "latin1". So some research revealed glibc's gconv uses plugin modules for conversions and sure enough I was missing the ISO8859-1 module, a.k.a. "latin1". I got that compiled/installed and the configure tests passed.> > If glibc should work, what should I check to troubleshoot my environment? > > > > The configure error I get is > > checking iconv.h usability... yes > > checking iconv.h presence... yes > > checking for iconv.h... yes > > checking for iconv... yes > > checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1", "ASCII" and "UCS-*"... no > > configure: error: a suitable iconv is essential > > You look in config.log for the details we cannot even guess at.Sorry for the omission. The log didn't seem to show anything other than that the one specific test failed and I did not want to waste anyone's time combing the log if it seemed my problem was very system specific rather than the confusion of a novice user. Thank you for being willing to dive deeper and my apologies if I consumed more of anyone's time by NOT including more detail. -- Virgil Smith ________________________________ Notice to recipient: This email is meant for only the intended recipient of the transmission, and may be a communication privileged by law, subject to export control restrictions or that otherwise contains proprietary information. If you receive this email by mistake, please notify us immediately by replying to this message and then destroy it and do not review, disclose, copy or distribute it. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.