[Rcpp-devel] Rcmd build in Windows

[Dahir Alihassan]

Hi,

I am trying to build and install (Rcmd build) an RCPP package, with RTools
etc installed. Initially I setup the project in an IDE (CodeBlocks) and
managed to link against rcpp thus producing a DLL file just fine.
Following this I had a look at the Writing R Extensions Manual
(http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.pdf) and so I am aware of
makevars.win and configure.win files. I also managed to install Rcpp using
Rcmd so clearly the toolchain is setup correctly, and thus I have setup a
skeleton Rcpp project for which Rcmd build and install work fine.

What I don't understand - in my case, with a prebuilt DLL - is why Rcmd
build needs to call g++ to recreate another DLL; it seems like I am
repeating the whole process I went through in the IDE. The main issue is
that my project links to external libraries (like C++ Boost) and so Rcmd
build/install complains about the project include headers and paths; I
assume the only way to set this up is in the configure.win and
makevars.win files which seems fairly tedious - am I repeating the whole
process? I hope I am just misunderstanding the build process; I have tried
reading the manuals but I was hoping you could clear my head with regards
to this issue. Thanks very much.