[R-pkg-devel] how to make "r-release-osx-x86_64-mavericks" machine support rgl 3D plots

[Søren Havelund Welling]

Dear all

I have a package(forestFloor) which produces an test error when built on the "r-release-osx-x86_64-mavericks" machine. I'm quite sure it's due to Xquartz(or similar) graphical resources have to be installed for 3D plotting. I tried with no luck, to screen the source code of ~15 other packages importing rgl to get some inspiration. Most packages did not run any rgl examples or tests.

See the error message below

Questions:
1. I there a fix for "r-release-osx-x86_64-mavericks" machine? Could I e.g. specify Xquartz to be installed?
2. Should I in general just assume no OSX user has installed Xquartz and link to a OSX install-guide from source in description file?
3.  Can I in general test builds on "r-release-osx-x86_64-mavericks" machine somehow without spamming CRAN with submissions?


Thanks in advance
Soren H Welling

Check DetailsVersion: 1.8.3 
Check: tests 
Result: ERROR 
    Running the tests in ‘tests/stdUsage.R’ failed.
    Last 13 lines of output:
     > plot(ffTest42,col=Col,plot_GOF=TRUE,speed=T) 
     [1] "compute goodness-of-fit with leave-one-out k-nearest neighbor(guassian kernel), kknn package"
     > 
     > #if ever needed, k-nearest neighbor parameters for goodness-of-fit can be access through convolute_ff
     > #a new fit will be calculated and added to forstFloor object as ffTest42$FCfit
     > ffTest42 = convolute_ff(ffTest42,userArgs.kknn=alist(kernel="epanechnikov",kmax=5))
     > plot(ffTest42,col=Col,plot_GOF=TRUE)
     > 
     > #in 3D the interaction between X3 and X reveals itself completely
     > show3d(ffTest42,3:4,col=Col,plot.rgl=list(size=5),sortByImportance=FALSE) 
     Error in rgl.open(useNULL) : rgl.open failed
     Calls: show3d ... plot3d.default -> next3d -> .check3d -> open3d -> rgl.open
     Execution halted 
Flavor: r-release-osx-x86_64-mavericks