[R-pkg-devel] "crossprod" is not a BUILTIN function

[Duncan Murdoch]

There are two kinds of builds:  source builds (producing the .tar.gz 
file) and binary builds (producing the .zip file on Windows).  Binary 
builds are specific to R minor versions:  if you build on R version 
x.y.z, you can't expect the package to work if either x or y changes.

Source builds should work on other R versions, though sometimes moving 
to earlier versions will cause problems (because the format of files in 
the .tar.gz file may have changed), or your package relies on features 
that weren't present earlier.  Generally .tar.gz files will work on 
later versions (though changes in R might break it).

So if you did a binary build on R 4.4.x and tested it on R 4.3.1, it's 
not at all surprising that it failed.  If you did a source build on R 
4.4.x and it failed on R 4.3.1, that's more surprising.

Duncan Murdoch

On 26/10/2023 9:43 a.m., Plamen Mirazchiyski wrote:
> Thank you very much for your responses Duncan and Ivan.
> 
> I do not call .Internal(crossprod( ... )) directly. I use crossprod()
> just once in the entire package, the actual line of code is
> 
> unname(obj = crossprod(x = sweep(x = as.matrix(replicated.averages),
> MARGIN = 2, mean.replicate.averages, FUN = "-"))*des.scale.fac)
> 
> I followed Ivan's advice, built a binary package from source in R 4.3.1
> on Windows 10, then tested it on another Windows 10 machine with R
> 4.3.1. The problem did not occur et all.
> 
> If I understand Ivan's email, my package should work on R 4.3.1, but
> what about newer versions? I checked some packages that were released
> today, e.g. abn, these were built by CRAN "using R Under development
> (unstable) (2023-10-24 r85407 ucrt)". Does this mean mine will fail on
> the current released version (4.3.1) if built by CRAN. As far as I see
> from the R Developer Page (https://developer.r-project.org), there is a
> new version (4.3.2) scheduled for October 31, 2023. Should I better wait
> until then?
> 
> Best,
> Plamen
> 
> On 10/25/23 21:26, Ivan Krylov wrote:
>> В Wed, 25 Oct 2023 21:02:00 +0200
>> Plamen Mirazchiyski <plamen.mirazchiyski using ineri.org> пишет:
>>
>>> Today I was preparing a new version for the RALSA package. I have
>>> built a Windows package using "devtools::check_win_devel()".
>>
>>> The machine has R 4.3.1, the latest official release. After I load the
>>> test RALSA package, R displays a message saying "Package RALSA built
>>> under R version 4.4.0"
>>
>> Can you use R CMD build to make a .tar.gz source package and then
>> install that on the Windows 10 machine running R 4.3.1? There is
>> convenience and a lot of added value in both Win-Builder and devtools,
>> but it shouldn't be necessary to rely on 96 CRAN packages and an online
>> service just to build a package.
>>
>> crossprod(x,y) has indeed been recently changed from
>> .Internal(crossprod(x, y)) to .Primitive("crossprod"). This makes it
>> possible for a binary package prepared using R-devel (with a call to
>> .Primitive('crossprod')) to misbehave on a released version of R (which
>> does have .Internal(crossprod(...)) but not .Primitive('crossprod')).
>>
>> Installing from source will avoid this problem. So will building the
>> binary package using R-4.3.1 to run it on a different machine with
>> R-4.3.1.
>>
>>
>>
>