R-beta: R with gnuwin32

[guido@sirio.stat.unipd.it]

Peter Dalgaard BSA writes:
> .........
> 2) But it really belongs on R-devel, not R-help. R-help is for helping
> users with installing and using R, not debating its future or
> discussing technical issues. Could I ask you to do_subscribe and then we
> move the discussion there? (Don't worry, R-devel is not a very high
> volume list.)
> 
  Ok. I am here.
> 
> .......
> I tried essentially the same stunt, but couldn't figure out how to get
> the Windows console and graphics going, "Multiple Document Interface"
> and all that. In particular, there's trouble with the gnuwin header
> files versus the MS Platform SDK used in the sources. Does this mean
> that you have a version running just like the "official" one? And
> could it run under Win3 too? 
> 
  (a) The gnuwin header miss some definition used by R. I hand copied
  them (they are long but not too much) from the header of
  a old Borland compiler (16 bit; so I also crossed my finger).
  I do not know if hand copy is correct but I mean "a copy made
  by my finger not using the cut and paste". Since now
  the header are freely available but non redistribuible I 
  suppose that this is legal. 
  (b) So I have a version of R that "works".
      "works": - I could run all the demos but the dynload one (I didn't
                 tried;
	       - I played with it for an   hour preparing the
	         slides for my lesson of this afternoon (poisson regression
	         + graph)
	       - I make use of the functions in the eda library (dynloaded).
	         and I tried some silly homemade dll. 
  (c) Running as the "official" one? No. The basic problem are
      with the R sources that load data/library...
      The system.win file, the one that I used from R-0.61.1, has
      a not working "library" (also but perhaps I make some mistake a 
      broken "data")
      For example to run the demos I used a silly ad hoc data function
      of the type
      data<-function(a) source(paste(basedata,a),sep="")
      On the contrary, some of the command under unix are implemented
      by shell commands. So the src/library/base/system.unix can't be
      used.
      Hence this part must be fixed. This is why, yesterday, I asked
      for documentation of what must go in  src/library/base/system.
      Perhaps, it was an inappropriate request since I can
      look to the unix one. But, you know. After, some hours
      I had the system running but I could not do "data(iris)"
      and with "no iris data there is no statistics".
  (d) About Win30. I don't know. 
	       

> > It seems
> > also a little faster than the october binary version 
> > (perhaps since I compiled the fortran sources directly
> > using g77).
> 
> I wouldn't be surprised, although Watcon does some register-passing
> tricks, which one would think made it faster, (as well as incompatible
> with other C compilers...!)
I just compare the time of
  for (i in 1:1000) a<-solve(matrix(rnorm(100),10,10))
matrix and the gnuwin32 version was 20% faster. 
I suppose that this is not a  fair test since
is biased towards the comparison of the fortran code (and I used g77).


> > (c) Is someone interested in this port? 
> 
> Definitely!
> 
  If you want, I can make the patch available in a couple of days.
  I just want to recompile from the scratch so that you have not
  to bother about the fact that I have forgotten a file o something
  like this. But I have now time today and tomorrow (teaching,
  teaching,...)
> 
> How about the cross-compilers?
>
  I suppose that if you have gcc running somewhere and configured
  to support win32 as target you can cross-compile. 
  But, I have not tried.
  
> > I believe that is not appropriate to make a binary distribution available
> > before (i) the base/R/system.win file has been fixed (or at least
> > before I, or better, someone else understand, what is going);
> > (ii) more testing.
> 
> Agreed, but binaries (of R *and* all the packages) will in a
> not-so-long perspective be needed for practical people. 
> 
  Ok. But with a stable distribution.

> > (d) I tried to recompile the regex library in the src/regex
> 
> Hmm. Does this line in src/regex/WHATSNEW ring a bell? (Not that I
> know what I'm talking about, I just use grep...)
> 
> you have to build regex.h explicitly by "make h".  The two known bugs
> 
  Thanks. So regex.h must be built. The line before the one
  that you quoted say that regex.h is generated by mkh.
  What kind of monster mkh is?


guido masarotto
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