[R] shared library configuration; Gnome GUI

[Paul Johnson]

Hello, everybody:

On a Fedora Core 3 Linux system, I built R-2.1 using an updated version 
of the spec file that was used to make the RPMs for version 2.0.1 on the 
CRAN system.  The build was fine, and packages updates perfectly.  Thanks!

Then I got curious about the package gnomeGUI. While trying to build 
that, I see errors
=============
* Installing *Frontend* package 'gnomeGUI' ...
Using R Installation in R_HOME=/usr/lib/R
R was not built as a shared library
Need a shared R library
ERROR: configuration failed for package 'gnomeGUI'
===================


So then I look back at re-building R, and see

 > ./configure --help

I see these two items that seem to contradict each other.  Why is the 
first defaulted to "no" and the second one "yes"?  What's the difference?

  --enable-R-shlib        build R as a shared library [no]

[...snip...]

   --enable-shared[=PKGS]
                           build shared libraries [default=yes]

I built with --enable-R-shlib and all seemed fine.

Anyway, it turns out it was all for nothing, because the Gnome package 
wants the Gnome-1.4 libraries, whereas I have 2.0X. So, I'm going to 
forget about gnomeGUI, but I wonder: did I do any harm by building R 
with the non-default --enable-R-shared?  Can it potentially break something?

As far as I can see, new R runs great.
-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn at ku.edu
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
1541 Lilac Lane, Rm 504
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66044-3177           FAX: (785) 864-5700