trouble installing rpy2 on win7 (R 2.12, Python 2.5)

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I had the same problem and got it working on Windows 7 by doing the install via conda

conda install --channel https://conda.binstar.org/joshadel rpy2

I have encountered a similar problem trying to use rpy2 with R 2.12 and Python 2.6 (as recommended by the rpy2 documentation).

It seems that windows binaries from http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/R-2.12.1-win.exe install the required R.dll in a directory not expected by rpy2.

I have copied all the files from R\R-2.12.1\bin\i386 to the bin directory, set an environnement variable R_HOME pointing to R\R-2.12.1 and it then worked.

I've encountered a somewhat different but related installation problem and finally found a solution at http://www.mail-archive.com/rpy-list@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02817.html

After I installed rpy2 2.0.8 via rpy2-2.0.8.win32-py2.6.msi (windows 7 (64bit), python 2.6, R 2.14 (both 32bit and 64bit, via RAndFriendsSetup2140V3.2-1-1.exe)), and tried to import rpy2 within python console, I got the exception:

Unable to locate R.dll

Adding the following lines to rinterface/__init__.py made it work:

if os.path.exists(os.path.join(R_HOME, 'lib')):             ## ADDED ##    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'bin')    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'modules')    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'lib')else:                                   ## ADDED ##    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'bin', 'i386')     ## ADDED ##    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'modules', 'i386') ## ADDED ##    os.environ['PATH'] += ';' + os.path.join(R_HOME, 'library')     ## ADDED ### Load the R dll using the explicit path# First try the bin dir:Rlib = os.path.join(R_HOME, 'bin', 'R.dll')# Try bin/i386 subdirectory seen in R 2.12.0                ## ADDED ##if not os.path.exists(Rlib):                        ## ADDED ##    Rlib = os.path.join(R_HOME, 'bin', 'i386', 'R.dll')         ## ADDED ### Then the lib dir:if not os.path.exists(Rlib):    Rlib = os.path.join(R_HOME, 'lib', 'R.dll')# Otherwise fail out!if not os.path.exists(Rlib):    raise RuntimeError("Unable to locate R.dll within %s" % R_HOME)

It turns out that the R.dll is moved but the __init__.py is not updated accordingly. So simply editing the __init__.py file will get things right.

Then I tried to replicate Taj G's situation, and I did it.After adding "your_R_installation_dir\bin\i386" into the windows environment variable PATH, the old error disappeared but new one came:

ValueError: Invalid substring in string

It seems that some additional pieces need to be installed and a C/C++ compiler needs to be correctly configured. I gave up here. Using easy_install to build rpy2 from source seems really tricky on windows and not officially support at present.

Although rpy2 2.0.8 is not a full-fledged version compared with 2.2.4, it is the latest version with standard windows installer on sourceforge. For now, it is the easy choice.