[R-SIG-Mac] install of nls.lm failed

[Simon Urbanek]

On Jun 30, 2005, at 5:24 AM, joerg van den hoff wrote:

> and since g77 seems not to be installed as part of the DevTools,  
> this would mean to recompile/reinstall gcc from scratch?

Not necessarily - see the R for Mac FAQ - there are several places  
where you can get just the g77 compiler.

> would it not be a better idea to use environment variables instead  
> of hardcoding the path into the binary which seems, after all, not  
> to be a standard setup? or am I wrong (apart from the "given  
> infinite time, one could do everything" problem)?

By design R on unix platforms determines compiler settings at  
configure/build time (and for a good reason). If you use a binary,  
you have to make sure all parts of the system (including compilers)  
are exactly same as at build time. It's not just the paths - it is  
not guaranteed that the fink compiler uses the same includes and  
libraries (in fact it often doesn't), so all other flags have to be  
set accordingly as well. Users reported several problems with the  
fink g77 so the only 'clean' solution is to re-compile R, because  
that is the only guarantee that all flags are determined correctly.

Cheers,
Simon