[R] R for various ports of linux

[Jackson, Alan AK SIEP-EPT-AEN]

Ahh that's the beauty of gentoo Linux and emerge. You get to compile from source, but at the same time it keeps track of what you have done. There is now a Freshmeat project for emerge on other platforms, so others can take advantage of this model if they wish.


Alan Jackson
Staff Geophysicist
Shell International Exploration and Production Inc.
3737 Bellaire Blvd, P O Box 481, Houston, Texas 77001-0481, USA

Tel: +0117132457355 none Other Tel: +011-713-245-7355
Email: Alan.Jackson at shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com/eandp-en


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Bolker [mailto:bolker at zoo.ufl.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 4:29 PM
To: Jason Turner
Cc: R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; Nathan Leon Pace, MD,MStat
Subject: Re: [R] R for various ports of linux



  I've always built from source and almost never had to do anything beyond 
"tar zxf sources.tgz; ./configure; make; make install" (on various Red Hat 
versions).  On the other hand ... I've been hoping to move in the 
direction of an apt- or rpm-based solution to get a better handle on 
tracking package versions etc. etc. across multiple machines ...  It does 
seem as though the Debian folks (Eddelbuettel [sp]?) are very quick about 
packaging apt versions ...

   Ben

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Jason Turner wrote:

> Nathan Leon Pace, MD, MStat wrote:
> 
> > To all:
> > 
> > I currently download the R binaries for Redhat 7.x Linux.
> > 
> > There is considerable turmoil in the vendors of Linux. Redhat apparently 
> > is changing it's business model to paid versions.
> > 
> > This might motivate my department to use a different vendor of Linux.
> > 
> > Is there anything predictable about which vendors/versions of Linux will 
> > have R binaries in the future?
> 
> Short answer: build from source.  You won't regret it.
> 
> Long answer:
> The "build from source" approach is remarkably painless under any Linux 
> distribution I've tried (RH, SuSE, Slackware, et. al.).  It's also 
> painless under Solaris.
> 
> The days of having to be a programmer to build R from source have been 
> over for years.  If you're computer literate enough to use R, you're 
> probably over-qualified to build from sources.
> 
> Kudos to R-core for their attention to detail in making what's 
> complicated "under the hood" quite simple for the end user.
> 
> Alternate answer:
> If you absolutely must have binaries, there will be binaries as long as 
> there are users of your OS with time they wish to commit to building 
> them.  This may be where your sysadmin steps in :)
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Jason
> 

-- 
620B Bartram Hall                            bolker at zoo.ufl.edu
Zoology Department, University of Florida    http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker
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