Adding installation instructions for Windows #74

llrs · 2022-10-03T19:31:57Z

This PR adds the instructions for windows, both binaries and from source.
Lately I cannot configure R from source in the windows but following this should be possible.

If someone could confirm or report any problem on this instructions I would appreciate and update the instructions.

This should be rebased and merged after #65

hturner · 2022-10-07T16:30:08Z

I tried out the instructions. When I get to $TOP_SRCDIR/configure --enable-R-shlib I get the error line 24073: ${}: bad substitution which corresponds to the line eval "test -z \"\${${Rshlibpath_var}}\"" in the configure script.

I think this error is due to Rshlibpath_var being empty, which you can confirm by running

Rshlibpath_var=test
eval "test -z \"\${${Rshlibpath_var}}\""

in the MYS2 shell - this works as above, but if you replace test with "" , you get the ${}: bad substitution error.

The wider problem is that when running $TOP_SRCDIR/configure (with or without the --enable-R-shlib option) from the MYS2 shell, the host system type is identified as x86_64-pc-msys and looking at the configure file, the variable shlibpath_var is not set in this case. If I run the same code in the Git Bash terminal in RStudio on Windows, the host system type is identified as x86_64-pc-mingw64 and the configure script gets past line 24073.

However, that doesn't solve the problem. The configure script then gets stuck because it can't find readline; if I run with option --with-readline=no it then gets stuck because it can't find X11; if I add option --with-x=no it gets stuck at checking for BSD networking... configure: BSD networking functions are required. I couldn't find a way to get past this!

Looking again at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/howto-R-4.2.html, those instructions do not use the configure script on Windows. I was able to build R successfully by following the instructions there to build directly in the src/gnuwin32 sub-directory of the svn repo. I also ran make check and make check-devel - the only issues were related to package vignettes and manuals, which are built in separate make steps (this isn't documented, you have to look in the Makefile in src/gnuwin32). I didn't get as far as fixing all that as I don't have MikTeX installed (I had TinyTex, but that's not easy to use as you have to install all the required packages manually when using outside of R).

So I think the bottom line is we shouldn't be using the configure script for Windows. We don't need to use the --enable-R-shlib to use the built version of R with RStudio, you can just go to Tools > Global Options > R version: [Change] > Choose a specific version of R and browse to ~/Downloads/R (i.e. $TOPSRC_DIR in the instructions). I was able to get this work and ran the examples in ?plots to check.

02-getting_started.Rmd

hturner · 2022-10-07T17:57:09Z

02-getting_started.Rmd


-To build R for Windows using `RTools` follow the instructions in this [README](https://github.com/r-windows/r-base#readme) file. There are two options available to build R. One is the quick development build and the other option is the full installer build.
+1.  [RTools](https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/rtools42/rtools.html) is the toolchain bundle that you can use to build R base and R packages containing compiled code, on Windows. 
+  They can be downloaded from [their own page](https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/rtools42/files/).


This is a bit confusing. For the purpose here, people just need the RTools42 installer (the rtools42-XXXX-XXXX.exe file).

hturner · 2022-10-07T17:58:25Z

02-getting_started.Rmd


-For development and testing, you need only the quick development build. The quick build avoids building the manuals, which are generally not needed for development and testing. 
+2.  You also need a distribution of LaTeX installed for building R and checking packages.
+    The MiKTeX distribution of LaTeX that is used on CRAN can be downloaded from <https://miktex.org>.


We should recommend this more strongly - even if people already have LaTeX via TinyTex, I think it will be easier for them to install MikTeX so that any required packages are installed on the fly.

02-getting_started.Rmd

hturner · 2022-10-07T18:09:58Z

02-getting_started.Rmd

+1.  Open the Rtools42 terminal, and update and get the tools:
+
+      pacman -Syuu
+      pacman -Sy wget subversion


We probably don't need subversion here if we are using TortoiseSVN or SlikSVN. I think it is helpful to recommend people install Subversion outside of the MSYS shell, so that it can be found more easily by other tools, e.g. RStudio.

02-getting_started.Rmd

llrs · 2022-10-07T20:30:08Z

Many thanks as always for helping me solve this problem!

I'll try to build it on Sunday, but when you said you were able to " to build R successfully " do you mean just running make on the src/gnuwin32?
I thought that before that I needed to configure it (as well as for RStudio to be able to use it).

I have MikTeX installed on that computer, and LiveTeX which provides the pdflatex command, I'll report if I can build the manuals and update how it goes.

hturner · 2022-10-10T09:52:40Z

Not quite, the make has different targets (rsync-recommended, all and recommended). So I did

cd ~/Downloads/R
unzip ../tcltk-5355-5175.zip
cd src/gnuwin32
make rsync-recommended
make all recommended
make check
make check-devel

I think make vignettes manuals might be needed for the checks to pass without any warnings or notes, but I guess this is also true for the Linux installation, so perhaps we can note that as an optional step.

llrs · 2022-10-10T18:20:04Z

Just notes for myself before writing it and anyone following through.

I can confirm this src/gnuwin32 works. But so far I used texlive as the pdflatex provider (in /c/texlive/2022/bin/win32/). When I opened the miketex, via the windows start menu, it asked me to check for updates and make it available in the PATH. I think it might be worth it to mention that one needs to open it and follow the recommendations then it would find the pdflatex file.

Also, I was surprised because RStudio wanted to select a folder with the R installation not the R.exe as I expected. This might be me not reading well the butttons in addition of lack of fmailiariy with windows programs.

This way the command can be directly copied and used

llrs · 2022-10-25T21:59:24Z

I was able to build and check successfully R from source in windows with MiKTeX, the program was installed just for the user in /c/Users/$USER/AppData/Local/Programs/MiKTeX/miktex/bin/x64.

I still need to check if make check-devel has any problem using user installation of MiKTeX, but I don't expect any. Another question is why with texlive the check fails...

llrs · 2022-11-05T12:57:45Z

I updated the branch to (hopefully) resolve all the comments. I moved all the prerequisites to their own section. I kept the svn installation inside MSYS to keep in line with other installation instructions but I mention there SlikSVN and TortoiseSVN.

nbenn

Unfortunately I neither have a Win machine available, nor have I ever tried building anything on that platform, so I can't give much feedback on content. I tried to improve some language issues, but feel free to ignore comments you don't see as improvements.

02-getting_started.Rmd

Co-authored-by: nbenn <3158446+nbenn@users.noreply.github.com>

llrs · 2022-11-27T15:19:22Z

I think now I addressed all the comments, if there isn't any other big issue/comment I will merge this after the meeting tomorrow. Thanks for all the feedback @hturner and @nbenn !

hturner · 2022-11-29T15:06:23Z

No major comments from me, so I merged this in to enable people to review the new section in a clean state.

Installation instructions for Windows

afda9f7

llrs changed the title ~~Adding installation instructions for Linux~~ Adding installation instructions for Windows Oct 6, 2022

hturner reviewed Oct 7, 2022

View reviewed changes

llrs added 2 commits October 12, 2022 12:09

Address most of the suggestions from Heather's review

6d169f7

Improve formatting and "fix" numbered list

e570349

SaranjeetKaur added the gsod-2022 Google Season of Docs related task label Oct 12, 2022

llrs added 2 commits October 25, 2022 23:36

Merge commit '6beb156a489d5ac764e20e2efa32e33701aa337b'

4d60586

Remove version number

cd9b9b1

This way the command can be directly copied and used

llrs added 2 commits November 5, 2022 13:54

Update the window's instructions using svn

d52cdc1

Merged origin/main into windows

2ce57e5

llrs requested review from hturner and nbenn November 5, 2022 12:58

llrs mentioned this pull request Nov 5, 2022

Prerequisits for Fedora #105

Merged

nbenn reviewed Nov 6, 2022

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llrs and others added 2 commits November 8, 2022 22:38

Apply suggestions from code review

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Co-authored-by: nbenn <3158446+nbenn@users.noreply.github.com>

Resolve the last remaining comments

01534c7

hturner merged commit a3279b0 into main Nov 29, 2022

hturner deleted the windows branch November 29, 2022 15:04

hturner mentioned this pull request Nov 29, 2022

"Building R and R packages" section needs updated to reflect the changes with Rtools42 #29

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Adding installation instructions for Windows #74

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Adding installation instructions for Windows #74

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