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

[Hadley Wickham]

> I have been attempting to collect enough material together to create a wiki
> book of sorts for the Windows user that is likely new to C++ as well.  I
> would be pleased to receive progress notes/problems off-list as you venture
> here.
>
> Rtools is pretty good, but there are things happening that are quite foreign
> to most “plug and play” Windows users.  The small bits of making sure you
> have assigned a correct PATH and, of course, assuring that R is installed in
> a directory without spaces are critical and will be overlooked by some no
> matter how you post it.  This stuff is much easier than getting a class of
> Wndows-oriented students going with a Linux installation.

In my experience teaching package development to windows developers, I
haven't found this to be too much of a problem, as long as you have
the right development environment (e.g. devtools or Rstudio).  Working
with the command line is a major stumbling block for windows users, so
if you can keep everything inside R, they will be much more
productive. Again, that's completely possible with devtools or
Rstudio.

Hadley

-- 
RStudio / Rice University
http://had.co.nz/