Linking C library to R - c

Question

I recently found this C library (http://libxlsxwriter.github.io/), and attempted to use it with R.
Getting the C library to work by itself was not difficult. I downloaded zlib and libxlsxwriter using msys2, and ran make in the libxlsxwriter folder.
Now I can run this Hello-World example, lets call it test.c:
#include "xlsxwriter.h"
void main() {
lxw_workbook *workbook = workbook_new("myexcel.xlsx");
lxw_worksheet *worksheet = workbook_add_worksheet(workbook, NULL);
int row = 0;
int col = 0;
worksheet_write_string(worksheet, row, col, "Hello me!", NULL);
workbook_close(workbook);
}
Now I can compile test.c by running:
cc test.c -o test -lxlsxwriter -lz
And then run the executable:
./test
And now I have a Hello-World excel document.
Getting it to work with R has been much trickier. If I simply run:
R CMD SHLIB test.c
I get this error: ibxlsxwriter/include/xlsxwriter/common.h:19:42: fatal error: xlsxwriter/third_party/queue.h: No such file or directory
#include "xlsxwriter/third_party/queue.h"
Yet the file is clearly there when I check.
Any advice on how to connect this C library with R? At this point I am just trying to get the hello-world example to run from R.
Would it be a better approach to start out building a package, with xlsxwriter in the inst folder, and then try to write a makevars that will get xlsxwriter to compile correctly? I know I would have to include PKG_CPPFLAGS = -I../inst/libxlsxwriter but I am guessing I would need more than that.

Answer 1

You may want to try Continuum's Anaconda R packages. They use MSYS2 packages fairly directly. The toolchain package is called m2w64-toolchain and the posix package is sometimes useful for building R packages too.
conda install -c r r-essentials m2w64-toolchain posix
Disclaimer: I work for Continuum, but I also work on MSYS2.