[R-SIG-Mac] R.app ?bug

[Simon Urbanek]

On Dec 8, 2007, at 6:19 PM, Loren Engrav wrote:

> This is rather vague but let me try please
>
> Am using MacOS 10.4.11
>
> And sessionInfo() say
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 2.6.1 (2007-11-26)
> powerpc-apple-darwin8.10.1
>
> locale:
> en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
>
> attached base packages:
> [1] splines   tools     stats     graphics  grDevices utils      
> datasets
> methods   base
>
> other attached packages:
> [1] hgu133plus2probe_2.0.0 hgu133plus2cdf_2.0.0   gcrma_2.10.0
> matchprobes_1.10.0     affy_1.16.0
> [6] preprocessCore_1.0.0   affyio_1.6.1           Biobase_1.16.1
>
> And I enter
>> Gibran81  <-  justGCRMA() #81 .cel files
> and since this takes a long time I click on R in menubar to hide it
> and go to Entourage and Safari and Activity Monitor, etc
>
> Then click on R in the dock to return to R but cannot get back,  
> clicking on
> R brings up Entourage or Safari or Activity Monitor
>
> But Activity Monitor say R is using 1.5 mb real RAM and 1.9 mb  
> virtual RAM
>
> It is like the Finder no longer knows where Mac R.app is
> So I must force quit, start R over, and leave it alone until done
>
> I checked r-SIG-Mac Dec Nov Oct and see nothing on this
>

If a computation blocks R and doesn't allow it to process events, then  
R cannot respond to user requests. My guess would be that justGCRMA  
calls some C code that fails to let R process events periodically, so  
R.app can't do anything about it since R is single-threaded :/. Finder  
will know about R once the computation is done, so just let it finish  
(and in the meantime bug the author of the code to let R process  
events ;)).

Cheers,
Simon