[R-pkg-devel] building package binaries for various OSX versions

[Bruce Hoff]

Hi:

A user of a binary package I provided reported that he could not load it
from R on Mac OSX version 10.11 (El Capitan).  The result of running
"require(<package name>)" is:

Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...) :
unable to load shared object ...:
dlopen(....so, 6): Symbol not found: _clock_getres
Referenced from: ....so (which was built for Mac OS X 10.12)
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

I checked that the package was indeed built on OSX version 10.12 (Sierra)
which I believe is the cause of the problem.   This issue prompts me to
ask, *What is the standard in the R community for supporting multiple
versions of osx when providing a binary package?*

- Is it normal to support more than one osx version, or just the latest
version?
- If the former, do you build packages on the oldest supported version
(depending on "backwards compatibility" for newer OSX versions to run the
older package) or do you build on multiple versions?
- If you build packages on multiple osx versions, which ones?  (How far
back do you go?)
- If you build packages on just a single osx version, which one?
- Is it common to successfully write a package which is not dependent on a
specific version of osx (obviating all of the above questions)?

I didn't any definitive answers to these questions here
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-exts.html
or here
https://cran.r-project.org/

I appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Thank you,

Bruce Hoff
Sage Bionetworks

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