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

[Diman Todorov]

Dear Dirk,
I have had the exactly same problem like Ivo and his solution worked for me.
Hence the USE=f77 flag is NOT a typo but a Gentoo quirk.
As far as modifying the configure script is concerned, I believe that it is certainly
possible to perform said check (if 'f77 --version == f2c' then die)
only on x86_64 platforms.
And I'd argue it is f2c's fault. AMD64 linux distros have been known to have troubles of this sort
especially as far as compilers are concerned.


regards
Diman Todorov

On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 06:59:14AM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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

(Err, no such thing exists: either g77, f2c or the fort77 wrapper for f2c.)

> 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 

Bad idea. 

My Debian configuration, driven from a single configuration, is used on
about a dozen different platforms. One of these, m68k, has a continually
been problematic with g77, which forces us to use f2c. 

And despite your fears, that is working swimmingly for R as well as the by
now 40 or so CRAN packages that are in the distro too, incl the ones like
VR, Hmisc/Design, tseries, ... that contain Fortran code.

> problems are not R's fault, but it can percolate into R and it can 
> protect people like myself.

I'd argue that it wasn't f2c's fault, but maybe an unlucky mix of parts of
your toolchain (gcc, binutils, libc, ...).