[R-sig-Geo] Help with rgdal on MACOS

[Barry Rowlingson]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 7:36 AM, Agustin Lobo <alobolistas at gmail.com> wrote:

> 4. Downloading binary from kyngchaos
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/frameworks?s[]=rgdal
> and installing with
> install.packages("~/Downloads/rgdal-0.6.29-1.zip")
> (I'm guessing the directory, is this the downloading directory by
> default in Macs?)
>
> Any advice on which one is the best alternative?
>

 I was recently asked by a new student with a Mac to sort out how to
read shapefiles into R for her. I know nothing about Mac packaging,
binaries, compilers etc, and she knew even less.

 After reading far too many confusing 'how to get rgdal working on a
Mac' mailing list messages, I got it working. What I think I did was:

 1. Download the kyngchaos GDAL Complete 'Framework':
http://www.kyngchaos.com/files/software/frameworks/GDAL_Complete-1.7.dmg
 2. Double click it, I think that opened it up and then somehow things
from that get installed. Wish I'd kept screenshots
 2.5 Wonder where in the .dmg file the rgdal binary is.
 3. Download the kyngchaos rgdal binary:
http://www.kyngchaos.com/files/software/frameworks/rgdal-0.6.29-1.zip
and did install.packages on that.

 - this is your method 4 spelt out!

I did get the fear that I was going to have to figure out what 'Xcode'
was, and that led me to the Apple developer page, and that seemed to
require an account - and a paid account at that - but then maybe Steve
Jobs thought I was going to try and write an iPhone app. I was at the
point of giving up and saying 'this is your laptop, you are the
superuser, you sort it out' when I spotted the rgdal binaries (which
weren't downloaded with the 'Framework', whatever one of those is).

 A walkthrough of installing rgdal for Mac with screenshots by this
method would be much appreciated. Too many non-techie people are
bringing Macs into the world and expecting techies with only Linux
(and a smidge of Windows) experience to fix them up. William
Kyngsbury's Mac resources are clearly a wonderful thing, but the
documentation for non Mac-heads is a bit sparse.

Barry