[R-SIG-Mac] New intel based laptops

[Simon Urbanek]

On Jan 19, 2006, at 10:13 AM, Cox, Stephen wrote:

> Folks - please forgive a rather uninformed post from a poor soul  
> who bailed out on the mac os several years ago...  I am considering  
> the purchase of a new MacBook Pro; however, I rely heavily on R for  
> my teaching and research.  I am assuming that the current binary of  
> v. 2.2.1 will work through the Rosetta engine, but - anyone have a  
> guess as to how long it will be before a native binary is available  
> (I am no prorgammer, and it would take me months to try to figure  
> out how to compile, especially in uncharted warters)?  Anyone know  
> of any problems I should be aware of?
>

There is an unofficial, experimental R 2.2.1 release for MacIntels  
available already (see the CRAN OS X page at the bottom - Jan kindly  
posted the direct link). The R.app GUI is in fact shipped as  
universal binary since 2.2.1.

The reason for the Intel build being experimental is that it doesn't  
pass make check. The compilers (both Apple gcc and Intel) still seem  
to have bugs that cause them to miscompile code.

However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel - just now I was  
able to compile R for MacIntel that is much closer to passing make  
check ("only" one part of one check failed), so I expect to have more  
serious binary sometime next week.

Cheers,
Simon