[R] repeated - R package - Compilation Error

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 rab45+ at pitt.edu wrote:

>>>>>>> "rab45" == rab45  <rab45>
>>>>>>>     on Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:25:14 -0400 (EDT) writes:
>>
>>      .................
>>
>>     rab45> I'm not sure what your point is. I'm getting a compilation
>> error for a
>>     rab45> package that should compile without errors. The error message
>> doesn't say
>>     rab45> anything about needing anything - it doesn't complain about
>>     rab45> "dependencies." Now once I got repeated to compile, it did give
>> a
>>     rab45> *warning" message about needing rmutils. But rmutils won't
>> compile and
>>     rab45> gives several error messages (in my other post). I've installed
>> many R
>>     rab45> packages and I've never seen problems like this before.
>>
>> well, probably the others where CRAN or bioconductor packages ?
>>
>> You know, there *is* a reason why we (actually, the repository
>> maintainers) require that a package runs  "R CMD check" without
>> a warning.
>> If package authors are not willing to clean up and document
>> their code well enough to be accepted by CRAN,  you have to
>> expect hardship when trying to install / use the package....
>>
>> Martin Maechler
>
> I think the real problem is that Fedora Core 4 has switched from f77 to
> gfortran.

The REAL problem is that some packages are not written in standard 
Fortran.  Compare the issues you found with the Fortran standards (which 
can be found via http://developer.r-project.org/Portability.html).

Martin's point is that some of the R volunteers put a lot of effort into 
helping (cooperative) package authors avoid such portability problems, and 
that you should be grateful (and give due credit) for such work.

For further discussion see recent threads on the r-devel list, where this 
sort of thing belongs (do check the posting guide).

-- 
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