[R-SIG-Mac] Clarification of R-Tcl/Tk installation wish-list

[James Wettenhall]

Hi,

I just thought I'd clarfify my "wish-list" for R-Tcl/Tk 
installation on Mac OS X.

If R-Tcl/Tk could be installed without the developer tools, 
the number of Mac-users of my GUIs would more than double! 
Installing Tcl/Tk from source may seem easy enough to Unix 
command-line users, but to my GUI users (biologists), they 
generally don't have the developer tools, and if anything 
went wrong with installing Tcl/Tk from source (e.g. X11 
headers and libraries not found), then they would give up 
very quickly.  Mac-using biologists don't necessarily have 
a Unix-minded I.T. administrator.

Does anyone else like the idea of having an option of installing 
Tcl/Tk binaries in $R_HOME/Tcl/ in the same way that it is done 
on Windows?  See "R_Tcl.zip" on Duncan Murdoch's webpage:
http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/

Now, as far as adminstrator privileges, it looks like I still 
have a bit to learn about the difference between root and 
administrator on Mac OS X.  But my desire should be clear - to 
be able to double-click the R installer from R.dmg and install 
it in a custom directory (without getting an error message 
saying that it requires administrator privileges).  Then I could 
practise building and installing my own customized R installer.

Maybe non-administrator installation in a custom directory is 
more difficult on Mac OS X than on Windows, because Mac OS X is 
based on Unix where it is natural to choose the --prefix for 
configure BEFORE building from source (so the binaries may 
contain absolute directory paths).  Similarly, some RPMs on 
Linux can only be installed in one place.  Can Mac OS X be 
more flexible, like R for Windows?

I wish I could sound more experienced with installing R on Mac, 
but we have a strict I.T. department which won't let me install 
anything requiring admin or root privileges.

Best regards,
James