[R-SIG-Mac] RSwitch - making it easier to test pre-release versions of R

[Simon Urbanek]

On Sep 20, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Rob J Goedman wrote:

> Thanks Simon,
>
> On Sep 19, 2006, at 4:59 PM, Simon Urbanek wrote:
>
>> Rob,
>>
>> On Sep 19, 2006, at 7:30 PM, Rob J Goedman wrote:
>>
>>> Could another way of using RSwitch be between two identical  
>>> versions of R, i.e. what triggers the list that shows up?
>>>
>>
>> It is simply the list of directories in /Library/R.framework/Versions
>
> That was the 1st thing I tried, but a newly created, empty  
> directory does not do the trick (show up in the list, it wouldn't  
> really work of course).

RSwitch is not that dumb ;), it's looking inside for Resources to  
make sure that it's not just a random directory.


> Duplicating an existing version branch does work though, so in the  
> future I'll create a copy just before populating a newly installed  
> version branch.
>

If you want to move a branch, copying is not enough, because all  
library paths are hard-coded in the binaries, so they'll be picking  
up the wrong version. You'll have to use install_name_tool to change  
them for all .so and .dylib. Also, CRAN binaries work only in the  
default location (unless you massage it with install_name_tool again).

I would really use FW_VERSION for custom framework location if you  
plan to use source packages.

Cheers,
Simon