[R] Building 'R' from source for Windows.

[rkevinburton at charter.net]

Thank you for looking into this. It turns out the problem was "You are misinterpreting R_HOME.  . . " I thought R_HOME was were I installed R not the directory where I was trying to compile the source. Once I moved the "extra" stuff that RTools.exe installed in what I thought was the R installation directory to where I was trying to cimpile the R source it became apparent what I had done wrong. Thanks again.

But unfortunately this brings up two more questions. One the function or project that I would like to start debugging is in appl (I would like to step into the L-LBFGSB lbfgsb.c code). The documentation that was with the RTools code mentioned that if I built a package like 'make DEBUG=T package' it would insert -gdwarf-2 in the compiler swtiches and that would allow be to set a breakpoint. Well I am not sure if the fact that this is not a package if that is why it didn't work but if I go to the appl directory and enter 'make DEBUG=T', I don't see gcc called with -gdwarf-2. If I go to the gnuwin32 directory and try to build all of 'R' like 'make DEBUG=T all recommended' I see the -gdwarf=2 flag added to compilation of each file. But I would rather not add debugging information to all the source in R. Any suggestions?

The second question is kind of like 'Where do I go from here?'. From the instructions I get that I probably need to use 'Inno' to build an installation. Hopefully once the first problem is solved this installation will have debugging symbols where I need them. If I run the resultant self-extracting installer will that just overwrite my R installation and now I debug with that?

Again, thanks for the additional tips. It has been a long time since I last debugged with anything other than Windows Visual Studio and this will take some getting used to.

Kevin

---- Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk> wrote: 
> rkevinburton at charter.net wrote:
> > I know I am going to catch alot of comments for this question but I am really stuck. If there is some written documentation that I have missed please redirect me.
> > 
> > I want to build 'R' from source on a Windows Platform. The main reasons are that I want to check out a debugging some existing packages so I need to build with debug symbols and I want to check out a 64-bit version of 'R'. So I read the instuructions and downloaded and installed 'rtools' and extracted the source. Then I ran into this statement in R-admin.pdf:
> > 
> >> Open a command window at ‘R_HOME/src/gnuwin32’. Edit ‘MkRules’ to set the >appropriate paths as needed and to set the type(s) of help that you want built. >Beware: ‘MkRules’ contains tabs and some editors (e.g., WinEdt) silently remove >them. Then run make all recommended and sit back and wait while the basic >compile takes place.
> > 
> > But when I go to this directory I don't see MkRules. In fact I don't see any files, just folders (bitmap and unicode). Are the instructions wrong ? Have I missed a step? Or is there somewhere I can retrieve the missing file (MkRules)?
> > 
> > Thank you. 
> > 
> > Kevin
> 
> It should be there. Three possibilities:
> 
> - Your editor is not showing it because of extension issues (look for 
> "All files")
> 
> - You are misinterpreting R_HOME as something other than the source 
> directory. (Could this be a typo? R_HOME is usually the destination dir, 
> but source is what makes sense here. Or are the instructions assuming 
> builddir=srcdir=destdir?)
> 
> - You unpacked it incorrectly or got the wrong source file. I checked 
> http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.9.1.tar.gz and it does have 
> the file in the right place.
> 
> 
> -- 
>     O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
>    c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
>   (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907