'R CMD config' doesn't work on Windows
On Thu, 18 May 2006, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
On Wed, 17 May 2006, Seth Falcon wrote:
Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> writes:
What is "config"?
Usage: R CMD config [options] [VAR] Get the value of a basic R configure variable VAR which must be among those listed in the 'Variables' section below, or the header and library flags necessary for linking against R.
On Windows, it's assumed to be a Perl script stored in RHOME/bin and as the message says, there's no such thing.
I guess this is a feature request then :-( Any Perl experts keen on translating the shell script that does R CMD config? I assume that is more or less what would be required.
You also need to collect the information. Much of it is only relevant to
building R on a Unix-alike: as the comment says
## <NOTE>
## The variables are basically the precious configure variables (with
## the R_* and MAIN_* ones removed), plus FLIBS and BLAS_LIBS.
and they are extracted from ${R_HOME}/etc${R_ARCH}/Makeconf which does not
exist on Windows.
I think it is up to those who feel this is needed to contribute and
maintain the code.
There are a few more problems: 1) The R for Windows build is relocatable, yet some of the answers will need to be relative to the installation. Since R CMD knows where R_HOME is, it could expand them out, or they could be in terms of R_HOME, depending on the intended usage. 2) This will not work when cross-compiling. 3) In some cases the answers are not available, e.g. for TCLTK_CPPFLAGS the headers are not usually installed. So somehow you would have to ascertain if this was a source build or a binary distribution. 4) In some cases the answers depend on the MkRules file, which is an optional install.
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