On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Glynn Clements wrote:
Markus Neteler wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification. So we'll check the PATH here which
> we modified to get the R/GRASS interface working [1].
>
> Markus
>
> [1] If interested, see instructions here:
> http://grass.itc.it/statsgrass/grass_r_insthints.html
It says:
- To bypass Cygwin's path and make sure that MinGW and Perl are the first
directories in the Cygwin path. So, one needs to modify the /etc/profile
file AND any user defined resource file in their home directory
(i.e. a ~/.bash_profile that needed updating too - don't know why but it
does). If ~/.bash_profile is not present, make it a copy of /etc/profile.
In /etc/profile change the PATH= definition so that $PATH comes first
(per default it comes last). Something like
PATH="$PATH:/usr....."
If you do this, don't expect typical Unix-ish programs (the ones for
which you installed Cygwin in the first place) to still work
afterwards. Cygwin's /bin (or /usr/bin, they're just aliases) needs to
come first, before any Windows/DOS stuff.
If, for whatever reason, R needs to have the Windows/DOS stuff come
first, then you need choose between having R work and having
everything else work.
No, it's not that. The R build train for Windows is *not* CygWin, but
MinGW, which the people/person making the port judged to be more stable.
Consequently, DLLs to be dynamically loaded into R *have* to be compiled
using MinGW gcc and friends. However, this path order is *only* needed for
installing the R/GRASS interface (and all other contributed packages
compiled from source - very rare, almost all are installed as binaries),
nothing in R otherwise should conflict with a regular PATH order with
CygWin /bin early. I suggest a script to re-order the PATH prior to and
then after making an R package installation from source.
If there exists a choice between Unix and Windows versions of R,
choosing the Unix version is likely to result in better compatibility
with GRASS.
R on Windows will not build under CygWin. On the Windows platform, MinGW
is the chosen build train, following which R runs natively. One can
complain that it ought to be CygWin, but the reaction is to invite the
complainer to become R Windows maintainer. I think everyone is very
grateful for the work the Windows maintainers do, and R is not going to
move to CygWin while they are in place.
This is the same issue faced by tcltkgrass (which requires Unix/X11
Tcl/Tk, not Windows Tcl/Tk) and NVIZ (which requires Unix/X11 versions
of both Tcl/Tk and OpenGL, not the Windows versions).
No, not the same issue. It's a design choice which can be got round when
an R source package needs to be installed on a Windows machine set up for
CygWin. One solution is to make a binary package of the R/GRASS interface
on some host machine, and have Windows users install that, rather than
from source.
Roger
--
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 93 93
e-mail: Roger.Bivand@nhh.no