[R-pkg-devel] Additional Issues: Intel

[Vladimir Dergachev]

On Wed, 17 Jan 2024, Hugh Parsonage wrote:

> My package grattan fails the Intel[1] check with
>
>  Error: segfault from C stack overflow
>
> I am unable to immediately see where in the test suite this error has
> occurred.  I seek advice on how to fix this error.  The only hunch I
> have is that the package uses C code and includes structs with arrays
> on the stack, which perhaps are excessive for the Intel check machine,
> but am far from confident that's the issue.  The repository is at
> <https://github.com/HughParsonage/grattan/>

Two possibilities to look into:

    * your structures on the stack are large. Don't do this ! Your code 
might run faster and would be easier to debug if you use regular memory 
allocation instead. Since R does fair number of memory allocation calls 
itself, the extra overhead from your calls will not be that noticeable.

    * your stuctures are small, but you have a recursive function that is 
called too often. In this case, the solution is to reimplement the 
recurrence without doing function calls (using a loop, for example). Some 
recurrences can be implemented without using any accumulating state. 
Others need it and you can use heap memory for that.

best

Vladimir Dergachev

>
> [1]https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/bdr/Intel/grattan.out
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-package-devel using r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
>