[R] R CMD INSTALL use differenct c++ compiler

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Luke wrote:

> Dear R Users,
>
> When I installed e1071 use R CMD INSTALL, I got
>
> configure: WARNING: g++ 2.96 cannot reliably be used with this package.
> configure: error: Please use a different C++ compiler.
>
> But how to let R CMD INSTALL use a different C++ compiler? and which
> C++ compiler is good?

The issue here is that `g++ 2.96' was never a released compiler.  See

 	http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-2.96.html

That did not stop some Linux distros distributing a compiler claiming to 
have that version number, but with serious bugs.  This was all a very long 
time ago (2000!), and gcc 3.4.4 is good.  (There are some issues with 
gcc 4.0.0, some of which are resolved in 4.0.1 released last week.)

It would make sense to install an updated compiler suite and rebuild 
R using it: since this is likely to a Linux OS (you did not say) it would 
be prudent to update the whole OS since many many bugs and security holes 
are known in Linuxen of that vintage.

-- 
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