Building R with Microsoft Visual C++
"Neil Osborne" <nc_osborne at hotmail.com> writes:
I decided to do it by myself, as the impression I got was that everybody was to busy to help. However, after having wasted the last three and a half months, I'm forced to come back, cup in hand. I would be very grateful to hear from anyone who has managed to build R under VC++ 6.0, and even more grateful, if they could e-mail me a VC project tthat builds R. It would not be neccessary to include R the source files, since I can download these myself. What would be useful though, would be the CORRECT tools (I spent almost a month following links in the very useful Readme files) etc. I happened to stumble on R shortly after my Masters degree in Applied Statistics. I think it's an AMAZING product, and the fact that it is open source is even more amazing. I take off my hat to all those that helped to make it a reality. My only gripe is that of "user-friendliness" when it comes to building R. The impression I get is that this is a closely guarded secret by old grey haired be-spectapled men in white coats with 50 or more years of hacking UNIX, who don't have time to explain anything to any one, and our stuck up in their own little world of academia - Sorry ;-).
Well, sixteen years to be precise in my case. However, you need to know that the grey-haired men (some more than others, none of us wear white coats though, and some of us can still manage without reading glasses) *also* gave up on Visual C++ many moons ago. The project file structure of VC++ is simply not strong enough to build the auxiliary files needed for R, and we only achieved the cross-platform portability by using the gnuwin tools. This is simply the traditional clash between two kinds of user-friendliness: making simple things easy vs. making difficult things possible (and automatable). (You can read the book or wait for the movie, but in academia the latter option may require a very long wait!)
This is just the impression I get, and many students I've spoken to have the same impression and so don't post to this group if they have any queries. I expect anytime, to have some Professor e-mailing to "tell me off" for being a naughty boy ! (and to kindly inform me that it's all in the FM!).
Well, it is... *provided* you use the suggested tools. Once the tools are installed, you start a shell, go to the relevant directory, type "make" and sit down and watch the magic. This might have taken you three and a half days to get to work and three and a half weeks to begin to understand how it works... If you want to use a different set of tools, in particular a proprietary one, you really can't expect anyone else to jump up and help you out. It might be doable - versions of R for Windows around the 0.50 revision (c.1997) were actually made with VC++ (by Robert), but it usually took him over a month from the Unix releases were made. However, the functionality of R has been expanded considerably since then and I have no clue as to where VC++ stands when it comes to dynamic linking and suchlike. I also think some non-binary items were actually built on Unix and copied across (but my memory is fading).
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._