[Rcpp-devel] Rcpp advocacy question -- build environment

JJ Allaire jj.allaire at gmail.com
Tue Nov 27 11:29:27 CET 2012


>
> I have little experience with Rtools and I stopped following windows
> years ago, so I'm a little worried about helping other folks with
> build issues here.  Is it worth the trouble to push for a *nix build
> environment, or is configuring R + Rcpp + Windows X now smooth enough
> that I should relax and not worry?
>

Rtools setup and configuration is pretty good now, with the one exception
that the user needs to add a copule of directories to their path (in a
specific order visa-vi each other and the R bin directory). The installer
provides an opportunity to do this however it's not the default behavior so
you need to document this requirement for the students explicitly.

RStudio has been adding support for sourceCpp recently (preview version
here: http://www.rstudio.com/ide/download/preview). One feature
particularly helpful for students new to C++ is that for failed
compilations the GCC error log is parsed into a navigable list.

Another thing related to the Rtools discussion above: Rtools writes it's
location to the Windows registry and RStudio uses this to make sure that
builds succeed even if the global path hasn't been edited. So setup for
your students should be as straightforward as running the RStudio and
Rtools installers. Students using other editors should either (a) make sure
to edit the system path as suggested by Rtools; or (b) source a script that
you provide to fixup their path correctly for the duration of sessions
where they want to use sourceCpp.
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