[R] Using non-gcc compilers with install.packages()

[Trond Hasle Amundsen]

Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> writes:

> On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Trond Hasle Amundsen wrote:
>
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I have built R 2.1.1 on Solaris and OSF1, and used the operating
>> system's native compiler set. This worked fine. However, when I try
>> using install.packages() it insists on using g77 etc., which doesn't
>> exist on those systems.
>> 
>> How can I specify which compilers to use? What about other
>> compile-time options like LDFLAGS etc.?
>> 
>> NB! Please include me in the CC list, since I'm not a mailinglist
>> member.
>> 
>> PS. I really like perl's approach to module building. When building
>> perl modules, it defaults to the same compilers as perl was initially
>> built with. This seems like a sane approach also for R IMHO.
>
> Indeed, R is pretty sane. Fine tuning is conveniently carried out by
> editing the config.site file in the root source directory; LDFLAGS are on
> line 138 of the released 2.1.1 source. Which particular packages have you
> found showing this behaviour?

Hmm..

 - The following use correct c/c++ compilers, but fail to recognize
   this as as Solaris system and uses -fPIC instead of -KPIC for
   shared objects. They also use other gcc-specific options like
   '-O2':

      RandomFields
      geoR
      geoRglm
      rgl
      

 - The following packages try g77 without first checking if it
   exists. I did not specify the F77 variable when compiling R, since
   it found f77 by itself. If all I need is to re-compile with the F77
   variable set to 'f77', I won't mind.

      akima
      sm
      spatstat
      splancs

There are problably more.. these two problem seem to be consistent
across modules, but I can't be sure.

Cheers,

-- 
Trond Hasle Amundsen <t.h.amundsen at usit.uio.no>
Center for Information Technology Services, University of Oslo