[R-pkg-devel] Compiler choice on CRAN (R-windows-oldrel)

[Mark van der Loo]

Thank you Peter, good points.

Good to know for sure (or a.s.) that compiler specification at CRAN is not
an option. The 4th option is interesting as well. I may just do that.

Thanks again!
Mark









Op do 25 aug. 2016 om 12:17 schreef peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com>:

> I don't have hard info on ABI compatibility between gcc versions, but
> there have been issues in the past, at least with with gfortran.
>
> Now, many people/schools will have R-3.2.x installed, built with gcc
> 4.6.y. We cannot retroactively recompile their installation, nor expect
> them to install a new version built with gcc 4.9.z. This raises a specific
> question and a generic one:
>
> - specific: Will a package binary of gower built with 4.9 work with R
> built with 4.6?
> - generic: Is is sufficiently likely that a given package if compiled with
> a different compiler version that CRAN would consider having a mechanism to
> specify a particular compiler version?
>
> I suspect that the answer to the second question is no.
>
> Whether to condition on R >= 3.3 is a good idea largely depends on two
> things
>
> - the user base (would they upgrade R anyways?)
> - are there other packages that depends on gower? (CRAN keeps only the
> newest version of a package so requiring a newer R could affect users with
> less aggressive update policies. This already happened when the pbkrtest
> package update rendered the car package unloadable.)
>
> You do have a 4th option: conditionalize the _code_ on the R version, then
> remove old-style code when 3.2.x becomes history.
>
> -pd
>
> On 25 Aug 2016, at 11:20 , Mark van der Loo <mark.vanderloo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Dear listers,
> >
> >
> > Compilation of my gower pkg fails on R-oldrel-windows. I am pretty sure
> > that this is because it uses gcc 4.6.3 which has limited support for
> OpenMP
> > (the errors are the same as I got on the old travis-ci build environment,
> > see my related question[1]).
> >
> > Now, according to the Rtools page[2], since R3.2.2 "Both the gcc 4.6.3
> > toolchain and a toolchain based on gcc 4.9.3 and mingw-w64 v3 are now
> > included." Not sure what that says about CRAN, but I'm hoping/guessing it
> > uses Rtools the same way as we do.
> >
> > So I guess I have the following options:
> >
> > - make my package depend on R>=3.3
> > - Alter my code (as kindly suggested by Ott Toomet in [1])
> > - Tell CRAN to use the modern compiler.
> >
> > Obviously, the latter would be easiest. Is this is even possible? For a
> > local installation I could set an environment variable[3], but how about
> > doing this at CRAN?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Mark
> >
> >
> > [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-package-devel/2016q3/000983.html
> > [2] https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/
> > [3]
> >
> https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#Customizing-package-compilation
> >
> >       [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-package-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>
> --
> Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
> Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
> Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
> Phone: (+45)38153501
> Office: A 4.23
> Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
>
>

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