A collection of helper functions that interface with the appropriate system utilities to learn about the build environment. Lets you explore 'make' rules to test the local configuration, or query 'pkg-config' to find compiler flags and libs needed for building packages with external dependencies. Also contains tools to analyze which libraries that a installed R package linked to by inspecting output from 'ldd' in combination with information from your distribution package manager, e.g. 'rpm' or 'dpkg'. Finally the package provides Windows-specific utilities to automatically find or install the suitable version of the 'Rtools' build environment, and diagnose some common problems.