Summary on Usage of R CMD INSTALL
"David Kane writes:
Thanks to Tim Hoar and Kurt Hornik for taking the time to answer my question about the usage of R CMD INSTALL. Tim suggested:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-args=--with-netCDF=/opt/local/netcdf-3.5.0 netCDF
no quotes at all, no spaces ...
Kurt wrote:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='LIBS=-L/mylibs' mypackage
Alas, I am not smart enough to know whether there is a contradiction between these two suggestions. My goal was to install the RODBC library in a situation in which we have libraries and other things in non-standard places.
Some add-on packages have provided configure options for specifying the non-standard locations of libraries and headers. This is nice, but means that you have to know what these package-specific options (e.g., `--with-netCDF=' in the above) are called, which is complicated and not really along the lines of Plug-and-Play installation. Hence, we have added the `--configure-vars' mechanism which allows you to do --configure-vars='LIBS=-L/path/to/libs CPPFLAGS=-I/path/to/headers'
In the end, a system-savy friend succeeded in this. He reports:
The problem was that the the shell script wrapping called by
R CMD INSTALL called "SHLIB" was not allowing environment variables
set in the executing shell to be used in the "${MAKE}" call. The fix
was to temporarily change the call in SHLIB to "${MAKE} -e" to force it
use the external environment variables. RODBC is a package that needs
several external variables to be set and the --configure-vars or
--configure-args options seem to be ineffective in trying to set
this library up.
Perhaps there is an easier way to get it done via some combination of --configure-args and/or --configure-vars that someone has found to work with RODBC. I have tried many different combinations but cannot say that I've tried all combinations.
Anyway, the above remedy works and it installs RODBC into R.
Again, I don't know if this work-around is an indication of problems with 1) my understanding of R CMD INSTALL and/or RODBC and/or UNIX; 2) R CMD INSTALL or 3) RODBC. I certainly agree with Kurt's suggestions that there should be more documentation/pointers on these issues. I offer the above in the hope that someone benefits from it.
I am not sure what is system-savvy about this. If what is intended and documented does not work, it is a bug, and should be reported as such. There is really no point in advocating a non-portable ($MAKE -e) and temporary solution. Re RODBC, assume you had libiodbc in a non-standard place, say e.g. `/home/me/lib'. Then you should be able to do R CMD INSTALL \ --configure-vars='-L/home/me/lib' /path/to/RODBC -k -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._