rmingwqpdf

How to build qpdf on Windows?

When running the checks for my R-package (via devtools::check()) I face the warning ''qpdf' is needed for checks on size reduction of PDFs. I found this question were it was suggested (if I understood the answer correctly) to run Sys.which(Sys.getenv("R_QPDF", "qpdf")) and see whether qpdf is found or not. In my case this just returns

qpdf ""

so, I think I didn't install qpdf correctly. Unfortunately it seems to be quite complicated to install qpdf on Windows. My first side question is: does it really is so painful and complicated to install qpdf for Windows or is there an easy solution?

I've followed the instructions until it is said to add C:\MinGW-w64\bin and C:\MinGW-w64\lib\mingw to the PATH variable. But then I don't find further specific instructions to install qpdf, only about how to build qpdf with different other programs. The second side question is: is my assumption correct that after I've build qpdf it is installed? But the real question is: What is the best way to build qpdf? I tried the ./config-mingw32 and ./config-mingw64 commands from the section "Building with MinGW" in my C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin\bash.exe but got the error messages ./config-mingw32: No such file or directory and have no idea how to fix this issue.

I'm using Windows 10, R version 3.3.2 Patched (2017-01-07 r71934) -- "Sincere Pumpkin Patch" and RStudio 1.0.136.

Solution

  • You basically do not need to build the file on windows. Please follow three steps below:

    1. Download qpdf for windows from https://sourceforge.net/projects/qpdf/?source=typ_redirect
    2. Extract files in a temp folder
    3. Copy the contents of the bin folder to %SystemRoot%\System32

    job done!

    Sys.which(Sys.getenv("R_QPDF", "qpdf"))
                             qpdf 
"C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\qpdf.exe"