ROracle 1.1-4 install failure for R 64 only: R version 2.15.0, Rtools215

Question

Hi,
I'm able to build and install ROracle for R 32 but not for R 64. My problem seems to be related to the configuration script (configure.win) calling "x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool"in the case of the arch 64 build.
Versions Used: ROracle 1.1-4, R version 2.15.0, Rtools 2.15.
Following the install instructions, when running "R CMD INSTALL --build --merge-multiarch ROracle_1.1-4.tar.gz", all goes fine for the 32 bits install (all is working fine thereafter in R 32) but when trying to build the 64 bits version, I get the following error:
generating ocimingw.lib from ocimingw.def
x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool: not found
gcc.exe: error: ocimingw.lib: No such file or directory
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'ROracle'
So I tried to add "C:\Rtools\gcc-4.6.3\i686-w64-mingw32\bin" to PATH and rename "dlltool" within it to "x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool". But in this case, when trying to compile ROracle.dll file, it is said that the generated "ocimingw.lib" file is not recognized:
gcc -m64 -shared -s -static-libgcc -o ROracle.dll tmp.def rodbi.o rooci.o -L. oc
imingw.lib -Ld:/RCompile/CRANpkg/extralibs64/local/lib/x64 -Ld:/RCompile/CRANpkg
/extralibs64/local/lib -LC:/Users/.../R/R-215~1.0/bin/x64 -lR
ocimingw.lib: file not recognized: File truncated
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'ROracle'
Moreover, in the file "configure.win" inside the package archive, it is said in the commentaries that "# oci.lib generated by 32-bit or 64-bit dlltool works on both versions". And last, the two dlltool.exe files (32 and 64) provided by Rtools 2.15 are exactly the same (I used WinDiff (x64) to check this).
Really disappointing, am I wrong somewhere ? I guess that the real problem may be related to Rtools and the MinGW W64 tools there provided but... ?
Thank you very much in advance.
Best Regards,
Mehdi

Answer 1

Mehdi,
Below we suggest a workaround that should allow you to proceed with building a usable version of ROracle-1.1.4 for 64 bit windows.
We are working on an update to ROracle that addresses the problem you have found.
To provide some context to the problem:
RTools-2.15 has deprecated x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool. This tool was present in the previous distribution/versions of RTools.
We use this tool in ROracle build process to generate a .lib file from OCI dll files. We did the .lib generation solely to try to accommodate
ROracle into the CRAN windows build environment so we are able to provide ROracle as a binary distribution on windows platforms.
However this mechanism did not pan out - not for any technical reason but rather due to OCI related licensing reasons. So ROracle continues
to be a source code only distribution on CRAN for windows.
We are working on reverting back to using OCI dll files directly, which will remove dependency on x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool
and the latest changed to RTools-2.15 has forced us to make this change more quickly.
In the meantime, please follow the steps below to work around dependency on x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool
1. Modify Makvars.win in Roracle/src directory to use: "PKG_LIBS=-L. -loci" instead of "PKG_LIBS=-L. ocimingw.lib"
2. Change configure.win in ROracle as follows:
Delete the the following lines:
# generate import library for mingW from ocimingw.def. oci.lib from msvc is
# not compatible with it.
# NOTE: If necessary one can use pexports.exe or dumpbin to generate the
# oci.def file.
# download pexports.exe and run "pexports ${ROCI_LIB}/oci.dll > ocimingw.def"
# or run "dumpbin /exports oci.dll"
# oci.lib generated by 32-bit or 64-bit dlltool works on both versions
echo "generating ocimingw.lib from ocimingw.def"
if [ $R_ARCH = '/x64' ]; then
x86_64-w64-mingw32-dlltool input-def ./src/ocimingw.def  dllname OCI.DLL --output-lib ./src/ocimingw.lib -k
else
dlltool input-def ./src/ocimingw.def  dllname OCI.DLL --output-lib ./src/ocimingw.lib -k
fi
Add the following in its place:
# copy OCI libraries
echo "copying from" ${ROCI_LIB}
cp ${ROCI_LIB}/oci.dll ./src
cp ${ROCI_LIB}/orannzsbb11.dll ./src
cp ${ROCI_LIB}/oraociei11.dll ./src
Thank you
ROracle maintainers