[Rd] OSX Yosemite (10.10): Are package binaries the same as for OSX Mavericks (10.9)?

[Henrik Bengtsson]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Dan Tenenbaum <dtenenba at fredhutch.org> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Dan Tenenbaum" <dtenenba at fredhutch.org>
>> To: "Henrik Bengtsson" <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu>
>> Cc: "R-devel" <r-devel at r-project.org>
>> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 11:21:59 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Rd] OSX Yosemite (10.10): Are package binaries the same as for OSX Mavericks (10.9)?
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Henrik Bengtsson" <hb at biostat.ucsf.edu>
>> > To: "R-devel" <r-devel at r-project.org>
>> > Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 11:16:10 AM
>> > Subject: [Rd] OSX Yosemite (10.10): Are package binaries the same
>> > as for OSX Mavericks (10.9)?
>> >
>> > I'm trying to help someone to troubleshoot possible OSX Yosemite
>> > issues, but I've only got access to OSX (< 10.9) so I cannot check
>> > myself.
>> >
>> > When building/installing binary R packages, there are different
>> > binaries depending on OSX version.  For instance, CRAN provides
>> > different binaries for 'OS X Snow Leopard' and 'OS X Mavericks',
>> > e.g.
>> > http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/matrixStats/index.html.
>> >
>> > What about the new OSX Yosemite?  From
>> > http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-admin.html#Yosemite
>> > it
>> > looks like its binaries are the same/compatible with those of 'OS X
>> > Mavericks' - can someone please confirm this?  Another way to put
>> > it,
>> > if a repository provides OSX Mavericks binaries will an OSX
>> > Yosemite
>> > user install these or we s/he fall back to installing from source?
>> >
>>
>> Yes, a Yosemite user will by default be installing packages built on
>> Mavericks using the Mavericks build of R, and they should work.
>>
>
> Provided of course that that Yosemite user is using the Mavericks build of R. They could also be using the Snow Leopard build of R which should also work, and would be installing by default packages build on Snow Leopard using the Snow Leopard build of R.

Thanks for this Dan.

As far as I understand, for an OSX user to install binary packages
option 'pkgType' has to be set to either "mac.binary" or
"mac.binary.mavericks".  A few questions for clarification:

Q. Is it the default that 'pkgType' be set to "mac.binary" on OSX (<
10.9) and to "mac.binary.mavericks" on OSX (>= 10.9)?

Q. Are you saying that if an OSX (>= 10.9) user uses
options(pkgType="mac.binary"), then install.packages() will install
the OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) binaries *and* that these binaries are
backward compatible and should work equally well?

Q. In other words, if a user have problems with a particular OSX 10.9
(Mavericks) binary, would a first step of troubleshooting be to ask
that user to try the OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) build?

Q. If a user has options(pkgType="mac.binary.mavericks"), but the
repository does not provide such binaries, will install.packages()
fall back to "mac.binary", or will it go directly to "source"?

/Henrik

PS. <rant>From a non-active OSX user, using names instead of numbers
to refer to versions is cute but insane. You need a very good memory
to keep track of the ordering of Snow Leopard, Leopard, Mavericks etc.
and it's not getting easier.</rant>  It would be great if R/BioC and
everyone else would always present the version number when talking
about OSX version and only use the name for redundancy.

>
> Dan
>
>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> > Henrik
>> >
>> > ______________________________________________
>> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>> >
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>