[Rd] Rtools for building 64 bit windows packages

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 22/04/2010 3:04 PM, Sharpie wrote:
> Hello R developers,
>
> I sincerely apologize if the answer to this question is clearly documented
> somewhere, but I was unable to figure it out over my morning coffee.
>
> I just downloaded today's release of R 2.11.0 and installed it on my Windows
> 7 64 bit VM.  I also downloaded the latest version of Rtools211 from
> Professor Murdoch's site.   The first thing I attempted to do was build some
> of my packages from source to check that they work with the new version.  I
> got the following error message:
>
>   making DLL ...
> x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -I"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-211~1.0-X/include"         -O2
> -Wall  -std=gnu99 -c tikzDevice.c -o tikzDevice.o
> x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc: not found
>
> This does not surprise me, R 2.11.0 is hot out of the forge and Rtools
> probably hasn't been repacked to support the 64 bit version.  I gathered
> from the Windows FAQ and the list archives that the MinGW-w64 project
> supplies the compilers and linkers used by the 64 bit version- I visited
> their site and found the selection of packages available for download...
> confusing.
>
> I guess what I'm asking: 
>
>   * Do I use the Cygwin binaries?
>   

You can use the Rtools for the stuff other than the compilers.  You need 
the MinGW 64 bit versions of the compilers; they are not nicely packaged 
yet, but the instructions for finding them are in the new version of the 
R-admin manual, in the section 3.3, "Building R for 64 bit Windows". 

Duncan Murdoch
>   * If not, is there an officially "blessed" binary distribution of Windows
> x86_64 compilers and binutils?
>   
>   * If not, do I build the x86_64 toolchain from the current HEAD, or is
> there a specific revision that has been determined to be stable?
>
>
> Thanks for your time and effort on maintaining and enhancing such a
> wonderful language!
>
> -Charlie
>
> -----
> Charlie Sharpsteen
> Undergraduate-- Environmental Resources Engineering
> Humboldt State University
>