[R-pkg-devel] Package Load fails to find 3rd Party DLL

? Wed, 12 Jul 2023 09:41:11 -0400
Russell Almond <russell.g.almond at gmail.com> ?????:

 ? C:\rtools43\x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix\bin\nm.exe:
'NeticaDLL': No such file

This is where the problem starts. You can retrace the steps that R
takes when building and installing the package by running sh
configure.win manually and then running something like
R_PACKAGE_DIR="$(pwd)" R CMD SHLIB -n *.c in the src subdirectory of
the package. That will in turn tell you the exact command lines to be
run while building your package, including the following:

 nm Cases.o Continuous.o Edges.o Experience.o Inference.o Networks.o \
  Node.o Random.o Registration.o Session.o NeticaDLL \
 | sed -n 's/^.* [BCDRT] / /p' \
 | sed -e '/[.]refptr[.]/d' -e '/[.]weak[.]/d' \
 | sed 's/[^ ][^ ]*/"&"/g' \
 >> tmp.def;

That "NeticaDLL" at the end of the list of object files doesn't belong
there. I think it gets added because it's among the dependencies of the
$(SHLIB) Make target. It would be best to make that target a real
object file that nm.exe can process. Otherwise, you could also write
your own .def file and skip its automatic generation.

After nm fails, you get a crash in the linker (while parsing the
resulting incomplete .def file?), which leaves your package without a
shared library to use:

C:\rtools43\x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix\bin/ld.exe: internal
error: aborting at ../../binutils-2.40/ld/ldlang.c:527 in
compare_section
C:\rtools43\x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix\bin/ld.exe: please report
this bug

There must be a way to streamline this process. Maybe put all the
library-downloading and extraction code into a portable
tools/configure.R (to be launched manually from the configure shell
script), leaving src/Makevars only to compile your own code, link with
Netica using PKG_LIBS, then copy the additional Netica DLL from a
custom install.libs.R file?

Best regards,
Ivan