[Rd] R 2.1.1 slated for June 20

[Martyn Plummer]

On Thu, 2005-06-16 at 12:41 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jun 2005, Martyn Plummer wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 17:07 -0500, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 23:52 +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> >>> Marc Schwartz <MSchwartz at mn.rr.com> writes:
> >>>
> >>>> On Fri, 2005-06-10 at 14:57 +0100, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> >>>>> On Fri, 10 Jun 2005, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> The next version of R will be released (barring force majeure) on June
> >>>>>> 20th, with beta versions available starting Monday.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Please do check them on your system *before* the release this time...
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Some things which it would be particularly helpful to have tested:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> - Bleeding-edge OSes, e.g. anyone running Fedora Core 4 test 3?  (These
> >>>>>    often show up problems with bugs in the pre-release versions of
> >>>>>    components such as X11 and compilers.)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Just as a quick heads up, I installed FC4 Release ("Stentz") late
> >>>> yesterday.
> >>>>
> >>>> R (Version 2.1.1 beta (2005-06-14)) compiles fine using:
> >>>>
> >>>> $ gcc --version
> >>>> gcc (GCC) 4.0.0 20050519 (Red Hat 4.0.0-8)
> >>>>
> >>>> and make check-all passes with no problems.
> >>>>
> >>>> I have also installed all CRAN packages that do not require other 3rd
> >>>> party drivers, etc. and there were no observed errors in those cases.
> >>>>
> >>>> So far, so good.
> >>>>
> >>>> If anything comes up, I will post a follow up.
> >>>>
> >>>> Best regards,
> >>>>
> >>>> Marc Schwartz
> >>>
> >>> Yep. Just tried the same on AMD64 (I had a bit of a fight converting
> >>> my SuSE setup -- FC4 is quite unhappy about ReiserFS for some reason).
> >>> A couple of f95 warnings whooshed by during the compile, that was all.
> >>>
> >>> By the way, I noticed that you can now "yum install R R-devel" and get
> >>> everything straight from Fedora Extras.
> >>
> >> Yep. Tom "Spot" Callaway is the FE maintainer for R.
> >
> > I had a look at his RPM last night.  It includes a patch for gcc4, which
> > fails to build R with the fairly aggressive optimizations used by
> > rpmbuild. ("-O2 -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2" will reproduce the bug, IIRC, but
> > I'm not upgrading my work PC just yet, so I can't be sure).  I folded
> > this into R-patched.  It's a shame he didn't send a bug report or, if he
> > did, I missed it.
> 
> Looks to me that this is bug in gcc4, not in R.  (It's not actually an 
> optimization.) I've resisted making any such changes until gcc 4.0.1 is 
> released - and that is held up on some outstanding bug fixes.
> 
> (BTW, it is a really good idea to put a comment in the file as to why
> unnecessary parentheses have been added.)

Mea culpa. 

I have asked Tom Callaway whether this was intended as a bug-fix for R
or a workaround. 

> It's a shame FC4 does not contain a well-tested high-quality compiler like
> 3.4.4 or 3.3.6, especially a well-tested high-quality Fortran compiler.

That's not what Fedora is for, as I was discussing with Marc. Fedora
users are willing (although perhaps unthinking) participants in Red
Hat's beta testing cycle.  By the time the bleeding-edge technology in
Fedora gets to Red Hat's paying customers, it is well-tested and high-
quality.

> > I also note he is using the patch that sets LANG=C, which is obsolete
> > now that R supports utf-8 locales.  I'll write to him (cc Marc) to let
> > him know about these changes.
> >
> > The RedHat RPMS also use the shared library version of R.  I've been
> > thinking about making this change myself, despite the substantial speed
> > penalty, since I've seen a growing number of people recompiling to get
> > the shared library.  The Red Hat choice forces my hand though: I don't
> > want people upgrading from their R 2.1.0 to my R 2.1.1 and finding their
> > installed packages don't work anymore.  The $64,000 question is how many
> > people are going to care about that 15-20% decrease in speed. Speak up
> > now if it concerns you.
> 
> Well, if they do they will also care about the 5-10% or so that gcc4 costs 
> them over 3.4.4 and so will not want your RPM.

That would depend on how I compile it.  I'm quite happy to maintain an
R-static RPM for people who feel the need for speed. But I don't know if
there is a demand. I see that the Debian package uses the shared
library.

> BTW, I find 15-20% on i686, 10-15 on x86_64, and I have no idea about PPC.
> (That warning about
> 
> dotcode.c:96: warning: ISO C forbids assignment between function pointer and `void *'
> 
> is supposed to be serious on PPC64 where a function pointer is really a 
> different sort of object.  FC4 claims to support 64-bit PPC, but it is not 
> clear that this is actually a 64-bit OS.)  gcc4 has features we can use to 
> narrow the gap but first it has to work reliably.
> 
> -- 
> 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

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message and its attachments are strictly confidential. If you are
not the intended recipient of this message, please immediately notify 
the sender and delete it. Since its integrity cannot be guaranteed, 
its content cannot involve the sender's responsibility. Any misuse, 
any disclosure or publication of its content, either whole or partial, 
is prohibited, exception made of formally approved use