[R-SIG-Mac] Building R 10.3.9

[Jari Oksanen]

On 17 Sep 2008, at 1:22, stephen sefick wrote:

> I have an old ibook that is not ready to go out to pasture
> 256 RAM
> 933 processor
>
> Can I build R 2.7.2 and up on this computer so that it will work with
> install.packages()
>
My old iBook G4 with MacOS 10.3.9 just broke down in spring, but I was  
able to build R (then 2.6.something) from sources following the  
standard instructions, like get the latest XCode (which is not very  
late for that system). However, you cannot build RGui (although they  
claimed back then you could), but you must use R from the Terminal.app  
or Emacs. I also had to use X11 graphics device, because quartz was  
made unusable (that was deliberate like I read in NEWS which told that  
quartz window will always open in the middle of my tiny screen, will  
be on top and cannot be moved to show the terminal where I write). I  
assume that quartz has changed since then like it has in the official  
Mac release, but that probably makes things even more difficult if you  
have OS 10.3.9. However, at least R 2.6.something can be made to work  
in OS 10.3.9. R 2.6.something is quite OK, except that you cannot ask  
help in R-help but they will come shouting to you to install the  
latest version.

I had glorious 384M RAM (which costed a lot), and that was quite  
usable in R, and also worked with double booting Ubuntu. Memory is  
cheaper what it was when you got your iBook, in particular because  
Apple doesn't sell memory to that old machines, and you must buy  
cheaper chips (like Kingston).

cheers, jari oksanen