[R-SIG-Mac] Link needed to use a binary package for R-2.3.0

[Jasjeet Singh Sekhon]

Simon,

Thanks.  If linking to libR would solve the issue, I can easily do
that.  Let me know.  If not, I guess I'll use Makevars for OS X.
However, there are two reasons why I don't currently use Makevars but
a legal Makefile generated by a configure script.  First, I don't want
to compile all of the files on all platform (for example, malloc.c is
only for OS X but OS X does not need a cblas wrapper).  Second, I want
to override the default CXXFLAGS and not simply prepend arguments to
it via PKG_CXXFLAGS.  For this package, aggressive optimization flags
are both safe and make a big difference.  Is it safe to assume that
all version of gcc will follow the first flag directive when
contradictory flags are given?  For example, if both -O3 and -O2 are
entered?  The Portland Group Compiler follows the last argument (-O2
in this case).  I guess this problem can be avoided for the default
install (which uses the "-g -O2" flags) by prepending the additional
optimizations implied by -O3.  That's what I do on Windows right now
(via Makevars.win).

Given the forgoing, creating my own Makefile by a configure script was
the easiest and most flexible thing to do.  I can easily get the
configure script to generate a Makevars file instead and get the
script to move source files around so everything remaining in the src
directory actually needs to be compiled on a given platform.  This
will cause R CMD check to complain about non portable compilation
flags in Makevars even though there is a configure script checking the
compiler.  But I assume that is a minor issue since you and Kurt could
ignore that warning for this package when posting to CRAN?

Cheers,
Jas.

=======================================
Jasjeet S. Sekhon                     
                                      
Associate Professor             
Travers Department of Political Science
Survey Research Center          
UC Berkeley                     

http://sekhon.berkeley.edu/
V: 510-642-9974  F: 617-507-5524
=======================================


Simon Urbanek writes:
 > Jas,
 > 
 > thanks for the report.
 > 
 > On May 29, 2006, at 6:32 PM, Jasjeet Singh Sekhon wrote:
 > 
 > > A user reported to me that the latest binary build of Matching  
 > > (2.1-1, built May 29) for R-2.3.0 does not load on his Intel Mac.
 > 
 > Your package bypasses the shlib building process and does not even  
 > link to libR. The fix-up code doesn't expect anything like that,  
 > because the consequence is that the `.so's don't contain the path to  
 > R and hence it is not possible to determine the correct path for the  
 > libraries (stdc++, gcc_s) that come shipped with R from the so itself.
 > 
 > Your package is the only one on CRAN with this issue. Although the  
 > behavior is legal, I would recommend rather using Makevars  
 > instead ;). For now I have fixed it manually and I'll see if I can  
 > get around the problem.
 > 
 > Cheers,
 > Simon