[R-SIG-Mac] Building R 10.3.9

[Jari Oksanen]

On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 10:36 -0400, stephen sefick wrote:
> I am not concerned about the mac goodies.  I am comfortable with the
> command line and X11 version.  I want to know will R act like R
> (getting packages without having to build them from source) if I build
> them from source.  Simon, I know you probably answered this, but I am
> a little dense.  Are building packages from sources "hard" or just an
> option in the install.packages command.  I will be faced with this if
> I switch over to Linux  or BSD.  R and I have become co-dependent- I
> don't use excel for anything because I can do it easier in R, and this
> is why I am going through all of this trouble.
> Thanks
> 
Stephen,

Current binaries of packages are only available for a current major
version of R. Only if you have R 2.7.x can you have binaries of
packages. However, setting up a build environment for packages is much
easier than having the build environment for the whole R, and using
source packages will free you form binary repositories. Command
install.packages() can build and install packages from sources
automatically without your manual interference. Little work, but not
much. If you build R from the source, you have all the tools you need to
build the packages, too. If you want to have a current version for G4 &
MacOS 10.3.9 you must build the whole R from sources (but you do not
need RGUI).  G4 & 10.3.9 is that an old system that you cannot rely on
getting binary versions of packages, but you better use source.

cheers, jari oksanen

--

Jari Oksanen <jari.oksanen at oulu.fi>