% File src/library/base/man/extSoftVersion.Rd
% Part of the R package, http://www.R-project.org
% Copyright 2014-2015 R Core Team
% Distributed under GPL 2 or later

\name{extSoftVersion}
\alias{extSoftVersion}
\title{
  Report Versions of Third-Party Software
}
\description{
  Report versions of (external) third-party software used.
}
\usage{
extSoftVersion()
}
\details{
  The reports the versions of third-party software libraries in use.
  These are often external but might have been compiled into \R when it
  was installed.

  With dynamic linking, these are the versions of the libraries linked
  to in this session: with static linking, of those compiled in.
}
\value{
  A named character vector, currently with components
  \item{zlib}{The version of \code{zlib} in use.}
  \item{bzlib}{The version of \code{bzlib} (from \command{bzip2}) in use.}
  \item{xz}{The version of \code{liblzma} (from \command{xz}) in use.}
  \item{PCRE}{The version of \code{PCRE} in use.}
  \item{ICU}{The version of \code{ICU} in use (if any, otherwise \code{""}).}
  \item{TRE}{The version of \code{libtre} in use.}
  \item{iconv}{The implementation and version of the \code{iconv}
  library in use (if known).}

  Note that the values for \code{bzlib} and \code{pcre} normally contain
  a date as well as the version number, and that for \code{tre} includes
  several items separated by spaces, the version number being the
  second.

  For \code{iconv} this will give the implementation as well as the
  version, for example \code{"GNU libiconv 1.14"}, \code{"glibc
  2.18"} or \code{"win_iconv"} (which has no version number).
}
\seealso{
  \code{\link{libcurlVersion}} for the version of \code{libCurl}.
  
  \code{\link{La_version}} for the version of LAPACK in use.

  \code{\link{grSoftVersion}} for third-party graphics software.

  \code{\link{tclVersion}} for the version of Tcl/Tk.
  
  \code{\link{pcre_config}} for PCRE configuration options.
}
\examples{
extSoftVersion()
## the PCRE version
sub(" .*", "", extSoftVersion()["PCRE"])
}