[R-pkg-devel] R_MAKEVARS_USER fail to pass down to sub-makes?

I think the issue is likely that you seem to be using a relative path to the R_MAKEVARS_USER file, it needs to be an absolute path as the installation is run in a temporary directory not from the directory you call `R CMD INSTALL` from.
I observed similar behavior to what you describe when I had the MAKEVARS_USER file as a relative path, but using an absolute path produced the expected result.

On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 8:04 AM Jan Gorecki <j.gorecki at wit.edu.pl> wrote:

Hi package devel support,

I am trying to use R_MAKEVARS_USER to customize build, rather than
.R/Makevars. It is properly displayed from config CFLAGS but during
package install it doesn't seem to work.

In R-admin in "6.3.3 Customizing package compilation" there is:

Note that these mechanisms do not work with packages which fail to pass settings down to sub-makes, perhaps reading etc/Makeconf in makefiles in subdirectories.

It seems that it applies to me. How should I debug that? to make this
env var respected? Note that my pkg has src/Makevars to handle openmp
switch nicely
Thank you

system("R_MAKEVARS_USER=library/gcc/O3/Makevars R CMD config CFLAGS")
-O3

system("R_MAKEVARS_USER=library/gcc/O3/Makevars R CMD INSTALL
--library=library/gcc/O3 mypkg_1.0.0.tar.gz")
* installing *source* package 'mypkg' ...
** using staged installation
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I"/usr/share/R/include" -DNDEBUG    -fopenmp -fpic  -g
-O2 -fdebug-prefix-map=/build/r-base-V28x5H/r-base-3.6.3=.
-fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time
-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g  -c assign.c -o assign.o