[Rd] Stack checking, core dumps, and embedding R

[Simon Urbanek]

On Apr 11, 2006, at 5:34 AM, A.J. Rossini wrote:

> I've been experiencing some interesting stack warnings recently  
> when moving from R 2.2.x to the R 2.3.0 series and the R 2.4.0  
> series.  In particular, I'm getting warnings of "Error: C stack  
> usage is too close to the limit" before segfaulting, and this  
> wasn't happening under the 2.2.x series.
>
> Here's the question statement:  (ONLY) In the situation where one  
> is embedding R, is anyone else seeing this occur with recent (past  
> 2 weeks) versions of R (both the 2.3.x and 2.4.x series)?
>

When embedding R, the stack base is set to -1 (which is almost  
certainly wrong) if R cannot find the stack base using some system  
method. I have just fixed the detection for OS X, so you shouldn't  
get that message there anymore. However, I was wondering why to not  
set it to something reasonable - even if we are not the main  
application, IMHO less harm is done setting it to something based on  
the current stack pointer than using -1. The status quo relies on the  
embedding application to set the stack base - I don't know if that's  
a good idea. Opinions?

Cheers,
Simon