R help - Sep 2007 - SHLIB problem under Vista

Hi all,


I'd like to distribute an R package that compiles some (small) C functions
every time it's sourced. The relevant code in the top level R script is as
follows:

system("R CMD SHLIB Selma_extensions.c")
if (.Platform$OS.type=="windows") {
    slash = '\\'
    dyn.load("Selma_extensions.dll")
}
if (.Platform$OS.type=="unix") {
    slash = '/'
    dyn.load("Selma_extensions.so")
}


This works fine on a Mac, but I tried it under Windows Vista, after
installing RTools and telling it to put itself on the system path, and got
the following:

making Selma_extensions.d from Selma_extensions.c
gcc.exe: installation problem, cannot exec `cc1': No such file or directory
make: *** [Selma_extensions.d] Error 1
Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) :
        unable to load shared library
'C:/Users/anand/Desktop/Selma/Selma_extensions.dll':
  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.

Can this be fixed without requiring the user to do anything?

Note: The compilation takes so little time relative to the use of the
package that it's no big deal to call SHLIB every time.


Thanks in advance,
Anand Patil

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

This is a known problem with your compiler installation, discussed in the 
R-admin manual.  From the version in R-patched:

   There are known problems with one of the compilers sets in this toolset
   on Windows Vista: see the workaround below. (With that workaround it has
   been used on both 32- and 64-bit versions of Vista.)

   ...

   On Vista systems you will need to add

   c:\Rtools\MinGW\libexec\gcc\mingw\3.4.5

   to the path.

This is not relevant to the recommended compiler set for R 2.6.0.


On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Anand Patil wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>
> I'd like to distribute an R package that compiles some (small) C
functions
> every time it's sourced. The relevant code in the top level R script is
as
> follows:
>
> system("R CMD SHLIB Selma_extensions.c")
> if (.Platform$OS.type=="windows") {
>    slash = '\\'
>    dyn.load("Selma_extensions.dll")
> }
> if (.Platform$OS.type=="unix") {
>    slash = '/'
>    dyn.load("Selma_extensions.so")
> }
Hmm, all the information you need is already in .Platform, $file.sep and 
$dynlib.ext: the latter varies by OS.type.
> This works fine on a Mac, but I tried it under Windows Vista, after
> installing RTools and telling it to put itself on the system path, and got
> the following:
>
> making Selma_extensions.d from Selma_extensions.c
> gcc.exe: installation problem, cannot exec `cc1': No such file or
directory
> make: *** [Selma_extensions.d] Error 1
> Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) :
>        unable to load shared library
> 'C:/Users/anand/Desktop/Selma/Selma_extensions.dll':
>  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.
>
> Can this be fixed without requiring the user to do anything?
The fix requires 'the user' to read the documentation.

-- 
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