[Rd] Clash between 'Cairo' and 'EBImage' packages on Windows

Prof Brian Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Tue Jul 22 10:13:28 CEST 2008


On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Simon Urbanek wrote:

> Brian,
>
> thanks for the analysis.
>
> On Jul 21, 2008, at 6:29 , Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, Sklyar, Oleg (London) wrote:
>> 
>>> EBImage is dynamically linked against GTK, which includes cairo
>>> libraries, so those are installed along with GTK. Cairo seems to be
>>> statically linking to libcairo.dll.a. I would assume that if it is
>> 
>> That is an import library, so it is actually linked to libcairo-2.dll, 
>> which it ships.
>> 
>>> linked statically it should not get confused with a shared library
>>> present elsewhere in the path, but it looks like it does. I have no
>>> solution for that because unlike Cairo I cannot not statically link
>>> EBImage to GTK as it is not one library that I need, but a bunch of
>>> those.
>>> 
>>> On Linux you won't get this problem as it uses the same centrally
>>> installed Cairo library.
>>> 
>>> In a way it would be better, if Cairo relied on the gladewin32.sf.net
>>> which normally provides GTK (and thus cairo libraries) for Windows and
>>> linked dynamically, but probably to simplify user installations the
>>> developers wanted to avoid this.
>> 
>> It _is_ using dynamic loading, or there would be no conflict.  From the 
>> names, it looks very like that it is using a DLL from gladewin32.
>> 
>> The real issue looks rather like a versioning problem, that the cairo 
>> libraries installed as part of GTK and used by EBImage are way too old 
>> (cairo_pdf_surface_create was added at cairo 1.2, and cairo is at 1.6.4). 
>> So updating to the current GTK distribution may be all that is needed (and 
>> Henrik could also try replacing your GTK's libcairo-2.dll by that 
>> distributed with Cairo).
>> 
>
> For compatibility sake I have updated the libcairo binary to 1.6.4 (based on 
> GTK+ build), so if EBImage gets updated all should be well.

EBImage relies on a user installation of GTK (AFAICS).  Last night I 
updated my GTK to 2.12.9 and used that's libcairo-2.dll in Cairo. It all 
seemed to work.

>>> There is not much I can do now about this, but I will follow the thread
>>> if anybody comes up with an idea to change the code if possible
>> 
>> The Cairo package (which ships DLLs) could rename them, as R itself does 
>> where it builds its own versions.  Or it could link statically (if that 
>> works, which it does not for e.g. package XML).
>
> I'd rather not maintain my own build of libcairo for Windows since I don't 
> use it. I may consider renaming the DLL, but given that I'm not building it 
> from sources I'm not sure whether there is a trivial way to do that.

If you are not building it yourself, then the only way is to use an editor 
on the DLL to change the embedded name.  I wouldn't suggest you do that (I 
had thought you were building it yourself).

>
> Best,
> Simon
>
>
>> I don't really understand why this was posted to R-devel: it is not an R 
>> issue.
>> 
>> 
>>> Dr Oleg Sklyar
>>> Technology Group
>>> Man Investments Ltd
>>> +44 (0)20 7144 3803
>>> osklyar at maninvestments.com
>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org
>>>> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Henrik Bengtsson
>>>> Sent: 19 July 2008 19:26
>>>> To: R-devel
>>>> Subject: [Rd] Clash between 'Cairo' and 'EBImage' packages on Windows
>>>> 
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> on Windows XP Pro with R version 2.7.1 Patched (2008-06-27
>>>> r46012) the 'Cairo' and the 'EBImage' packages does not play
>>>> well together.
>>>> 
>>>> Loading EBImage before Cairo cause the following to happen:
>>>> 
>>>> # Rterm --vanilla
>>>>> library(EBImage);
>>>>> library(Cairo)
>>>> Error in inDL(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now), ...) :
>>>> unable to load shared library
>>>> 'C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-2.7.1pat/library/Cairo/libs/Cai
>>>> ro.dll':
>>>> LoadLibrary failure:  The specified procedure could not be found.
>>>> 
>>>> Error : .onLoad failed in 'loadNamespace' for 'Cairo'
>>>> Error: package/namespace load failed for 'Cairo'
>>>> 
>>>> with a dialog titled 'Rterm.exe - Entry Point Not Found'
>>>> saying 'The procedure entry point cairo_pdf_surface_create
>>>> could not be located in the dynamic link library libcairo-2.dll'.
>>>> 
>>>> Loading the packages in the reverse order works, but the
>>>> Rterm seems unstable, e.g. calling q() immediately after will
>>>> exit the R session without questions:
>>>> 
>>>> # Rterm --vanilla
>>>>> library(Cairo)
>>>>> library(EBImage)
>>>>> q()
>>>> [Immediately back to the command line].
>>>> 
>>>> I cannot reproduce the problem on R v2.7.1 on Ubuntu Hardy.
>>>> 
>>>>> sessionInfo()
>>>> R version 2.7.1 Patched (2008-06-27 r46012)
>>>> i386-pc-mingw32
>>>> 
>>>> locale:
>>>> LC_COLLATE=English_United States.1252;LC_CTYPE=English_United
>>>> States.1252;LC_MON ETARY=English_United
>>>> States.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=English_United States.1252
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> attached base packages:
>>>> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
>>>> 
>>>> other attached packages:
>>>> [1] EBImage_2.4.0 Cairo_1.4-2
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers
>>>> 
>>>> Henrik
>>>> 
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> -- 
>> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
>> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>> 
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> 
>> 
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595



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