MinGW and the ld bug

I believe the bug is triggered by the fairly unusual event you have a '.'
in the package name, and the change in 2.2.1 to 2.2.1 patched was to add

LIBRARY R.native.dll

                   ^^^^
(which is what my workaround in ld.exe was doing another way).

Since we are told that is the correct form and we were using it
incorrectly before, I don't really know how to work around this.  For you,
just delete .dll in the following line in src/gnuwin32/MkRules

%.dll:
        @$(ECHO) LIBRARY $*.dll > $*.def

but that is not a general solution.


On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, Henrik Bengtsson wrote:

Hi.

I noticed that Brian Ripley found and corrected a bug in MinGW's
ld.exe, see http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/.  Thanks for
this.  I wonder if this is the same bug that cause my problems.  I
have tiny toy package with C code that installs perfectly on R Version
2.2.1 beta (2005-12-18 r36792) [this version was mislabelled "beta"
the first few hours on CRAN when the stable 2.2.1 version first came
out].  However, when I try to install the same on R Version 2.2.1
Patched (2006-02-09 r37305) as well as R Version 2.3.0 Under
development (unstable) (2006-02-02 r37243), I get the following error:

C:\Documents and Settings\hb\braju.com.R\R.native\build>Rcmd install R.native

---------- Making package R.native ------------
 adding build stamp to DESCRIPTION
 making DLL ...
making rowMedians.d from rowMedians.c
gcc   -IC:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.2.1pat/include -Wall -O2   -c rowMedians.c -o rowMedia
ns.o
ar cr R.native.a rowMedians.o
ranlib R.native.a
windres --include-dir C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.2.1pat/include  -i R.native_res.rc -o R.
native_res.o
gcc  --shared -s  -o R.native.dll R.native.def R.native.a R.native_res.o  -LC:/P
ROGRA~1/R/R-2.2.1pat/src/gnuwin32   -lg2c -lR
c:\MinGW\bin\..\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.4\..\..\..\..\mingw32\bin\ld.exe: R.native.d
ef:1: syntax error
c:\MinGW\bin\..\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.4\..\..\..\..\mingw32\bin\ld.exe:R.native.de
f: file format not recognized; treating as linker script
c:\MinGW\bin\..\lib\gcc\mingw32\3.4.4\..\..\..\..\mingw32\bin\ld.exe:R.native.de
f:1: syntax error
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [R.native.dll] Error 1
make[2]: *** [srcDynlib] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make: *** [pkg-R.native] Error 2
*** Installation of R.native failed ***

Removing 'C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.2.1pat/library/R.native'
Restoring previous 'C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.2.1pat/library/R.native'

My R.native.def looks like this:

LIBRARY R.native.dll
EXPORTS
rowMedians
rowMediansInteger
rowMediansReal

I've tried to replace the two occurances of ld.exe in MINGW with BR's
patch, but I get the same error.  The ld of the patch and the original
one show the same version string;
patch: GNU ld version 2.16.91 20050827 and original: GNU ld version
2.16.91 20050827. I've tried to use both MINGW v5.0.0 and v5.0.2 with
both "current" (v3.4.2) and "candidate" (v3.4.4) packages.

Hmm, only 3.4.5 is there as a candidate.

Is this related to the bug BR found?  Any suggestions what might go
wrong between R v2.2.1 and v2.2.1 patched?

Thanks

Henrik

--
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