The R Project SVN R

Building from a source-code library under Windows
=================================================

If your package has neither C nor Fortran source, see `Simple ports' 
at the bottom of this file.

First collect the tools that you need.

We recommend that you use the mingw32 port of gcc-2.95.2 by Mumit Khan
from ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32. You will
also need suitable versions of make, sh, rm, sed, awk, mkdir, echo, cp
and cat; we have packaged a set at
CRAN/bin/windows/windows-NT/base/etc/tools.zip extracted from the
cygwin distribution (http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin and several
mirrors). To avoid past problems on some versions of Windows 95, we
use the cygwin ld contained in that set, which must be before the
mingw32 one in your path. (We believe this is solved in gcc-2.95.2,
but have no way of testing this as we now use NT.)

It is also possible to use earlier mingw32 compilers or cygwin-b20.1
with the -mno-cygwin flag, but we suggest you do so only if you have a
working setup from building earlier versions of R. We have also
successfully used the variant of mingw32 that uses the MSVCRT run-time
system (under gcc-2.95.x but not earlier versions), and in the case of
the mclust library found this more successful that the standard
version.  Be aware that not all Windows machines have MSVCRT.DLL
installed.

(If you want to use cygwin, we suggest you upgrade to gcc-2.95.2 by
installing the files gcc-2.95.2-cygb20.tar.gz and
gcc-2.95.2-mingw-extra.tar.gz from
ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/cygwin32.  You will
need to do so to compile Fortran.)

perl5, available via http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports.

If you want to make compiled html (.chm) files you will need the
Microsoft HTML Help Workshop, available for download at 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/htmlhelp.

If you want to make Window help files you will need hcrtf.exe from a
Windows compiler installation (this has been available for download at
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/hcwsetup.exe), or hcp505.exe.

For large packages it is helpful to make zipped help files: for that
you need zip from the Info-ZIP project 
(ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/Info-ZIP.html and mirrors).

All of these need to be installed and in your path, and the
appropriate environment variables set.  Edit MkRules to set BUILD and
the appropriate paths as needed.  (IMPORTANT: if you use cygwin you
must edit MkRules and set BUILD=CYGWIN.)  Do remember to set MAKE_MODE
to UNIX (set MAKE_MODE=UNIX at the Windows command-line).


Then

    cd RHOME\src\gnuwin32
    make libR.a

which may take several minutes. (We have seen times from 30 secs to 20
minutes depending on processor speed, RAM, disk speed and
compiler. Using a network file system is likely to take longer.)  This
only needs to be done once for each R release.

For each package you want to install, unpack it to a directory, say
mypkg, in RHOME\src\library, and run

    cd RHOME\src\gnuwin32
    make pkg-mypkg

The Makefiles can be customized: in particular the name of the DLL can
be set (for example we once needed integrate-DLLNM=adapt), the compile
flags can be set (see the examples in MakeDll) and the types of help
(if any) to be generated can be chosen (variables HELP and WINHELP).


Using zipped help files
=======================

You will need zip installed, of course. Just run

    make ziponly-mypkg

after building mypkg.  Target `ziphelp-mypkg' will make the zip files
but not remove the separate files: this can be used for testing.


Checking packages
=================

The equivalent of `R CMD check mypkg' on Unix is

    make pkgcheck-mypkg

This runs all the examples in the help files. If you need to increase
the heap size or the number of cons cells (e.g. for nlme) use
environmental variables to do so.


Debugging
=========

See the RW-FAQ.


Using Visual C++
================

You may if you prefer use Visual C++ to make the DLLs (unless they use
Fortran source!). First build the import library R.lib by

    lib /def:R.exp /out:Rdll.lib

Then you can compile the objects and build the DLL by

    cl /MT /Ox /D "WIN32"  /c *.c
    link /dll /def:mypkg.def /out:mypkg.dll *.obj Rdll.lib

where you will need to create the .def file by hand listing the entry
points to be exported.  If the C sources use R header files you will
need to arrange for these to be searched, perhaps by

    /I ..\..\..\include

If you build a debug version of the DLL in the development
environment, you can debug the DLL code there just by setting the
executable to be debugged to the full path to the R front-end.


Simple Ports
============

If your package has neither C nor Fortran source, several steps can
be omitted.

You will need 

suitable versions of make, sh, rm, sed, awk, mkdir, echo, cp and cat;
we have packaged a set at bin/windows/windows-NT/etc/tools.zip

perl5, available via http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports.

All of these need to be installed and in your path, and the
appropriate environment variables set.

For each package you want to install, unpack it to a directory, say
mypkg, in RHOME\src\library, and run

    cd RHOME\src\gnuwin32
    make pkg-mypkg

If you have a Unix/Linux box, it will suffice to zip up the Unix installation
of the package.  Install the package, then

    cd `R RHOME`/library
    zip -rl /dest/mypkg.zip mypkg

(the -l flag converts to CRLF line endings: it is not absolutely necessary
but users may want to read the information files in a Windows editor).

zip is often installed on Linux machines, and sources and binaries for
Unix boxes are available via the Info-Zip site given above.


Non-standard locations
======================

You can specify the location of the package source by PKGDIR and the
library in which to install the package by RLIB, as in

    make PKGDIR=/mysources RLIB=/R/library pkg-mypkg
    make PKGDIR=/mysources RLIB=/R/library pkgcheck-mypkg

which installs the package in \mysources\mypkg as \R\library\mypkg and
checks its examples.


Cross-building packages on Linux
================================

It is straightforward to build a package on a i386-linux system,
although it is not possible (as far as we know) to cross-build .chm or
.hlp files.  For a package without compiled code you can just zip up
the Linux installation of the package.

First you need to set up the cross-compilers and tools (see INSTALL)
and have them in your path. We will assume that your Linux
installation has Perl5, unzip and zip.

Edit MkRules to set BUILD=CROSS and the appropriate paths as needed,
and check that Makefile has WINHELP set to NO.

Then packages can be made as natively, for example by

    cd .../src/gnuwin32
    make PKGDIR=/mysources RLIB=/R/win/library pkg-mypkg
    make PKGDIR=/mysources RLIB=/R/win/library pkgcheck-mypkg
    cd /R/win/library
    zip -rl /dest/mypkg.zip mypkg


Feedback
========

Please send comments and bug reports to (preferably both of)

    Guido Masarotto <guido@hal.stat.unipd.it>
    Brian Ripley <ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk>