thanks peter. I'll remember that for the future and change the document accordingly. I learned a lot by building from source but it wasn't easy . It also gave me the "forest through the trees" perspective to some degree which was good. Now I understand your point about using yum versus building from source so someday, when I get to that level, I'll take a look at the R-source !!!!! I "know" c and R but when I look at various R functions from the R prompt, they sometimes boggle my mind so I can imagine what the source itself would do. I don't want to over-boggle right now. mark On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 10:54 AM, peter dalgaard wrote: > > On Nov 9, 2011, at 08:27 , Steve Taylor wrote: > > > Yes, I got the attachment - thanks! Might give it a go in the next few > > days, if the repository hasn't been updated with an RPM. I've already > > learnt from experience to be wary of attempting to compile from source! > > > We really do want people to do so, though! > > It's an understandable, but unfortunate trend that build processes get > monopolized by distribution maintainers. Part of the spirit of Open Source > is that everyone can tinker with the code, many eyes looking at the > sources, etc. As things are going now, it is ironic that it is the Linux > distros that do not have new releases tested by end users until it is too > late. Too few people try the Windows and Mac prerelease binaries, but at > least they are there. > > It's not really that dangerous to do your own builds, just keep privat > builds separate from the production environment and possibly skip the > installation step -- R runs quite happily out of its build directory. Once > the toolkits are in place, you can even run builds from a cron job and > forget about them (until something breaks). > > Mark, one note: I'd keep the builddir completely separate from the srcdir, > and not as a subdirectory. I.e. ../R/configure rather than ../configure. > > > > > cheers, > > Steve > > > > On 9 November 2011 17:47, Mark Leeds wrote: > > > >> Hello: I've included a txt file ( some day, when I have more time, I'll > >> turn it into latex ) that has the steps for installing R from source on > >> Fedora. It was > >> written only for people like myself who find these tasks difficult. > >> > >> Also, could someone from the R-Sig-Fedora list let me know if the txt > file > >> was attached because I don't actually receive emails that I send to the > >> R-Sig-Fedora list. ( not sure why this is ? ). If it doesn't go > through, > >> I'll cut and paste and re-send it in the email itself. Thanks. > >> > >> > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > _______________________________________________ > > R-SIG-Fedora mailing list > > R-SIG-Fedora@r-project.org > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-fedora > > -- > Peter Dalgaard, Professor > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark > Phone: (+45)38153501 > Email: pd.mes@cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd@gmail.com > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]