[Rd] Re: [R] R on gentoo amd64 (gcc 3.3.3) is unstable --- no!

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 ivo_welch-rstat8783 at mailblocks.com wrote:

> 
> peter/brian:  thank you for the help.  i can now report that gentoo 
> amd64 can compile R just fine, too; it requires the f77 USE flag and a 
> gcc compiler rebuild first, though.  I also went to gcc 3.4.1.  my 
> segfault troubles earlier were caused by my use of f2c.
> 
> suggestion: would it be possible to add a code snippet  that tests 
> whether the user is trying to compile with f2c---and if so, bombs the 
> installation?  (if "f77 --version == f2c" then die)  I know the 
> problems are not R's fault, but it can percolate into R and it can 
> protect people like myself.

The thing is, it does work on some platforms -- I do test i686 RH8.0
(updated with gcc 3.4.1) from time to time and it looks like I tested
1.9.0 during beta test.  So `make check' is the only reliable test.
(I've just run the current R-devel to cross-check.  It runs into the 
infinite-loop in LAPACK problem with gcc >= 3.4.0 though, with the same 
fix.)

I suspect f2c on a 64-bit platform is a bad idea as int != long.
We could detect that.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595