[R-SIG-Mac] 64 bit Mac GUI

[Simon Urbanek]

On Feb 1, 2009, at 23:31 , Smith, Edward C wrote:

> Simon, I'm following up a post that you responded to online.   
> Apologies for the unsolicited email, but I thought you might be able  
> to answer a quick question.  I'm running Mac OSX (Leopard) with 4GB  
> RAM.  Nevertheless, I was getting the Error: Cannot allocate vector  
> of....etc. message running some data and routines on the 32-bit R  
> that I installed from CRAN.  I then installed the 64-bit and was  
> able to run what I needed without a memory error, BUT, the problem I  
> have now is that I can't seem to get a few necessary packages to  
> work in the new version.  Specifically, I use routines from the  
> "statnet" and "igraph" packages quite a bit.
>

Thanks to Brian for answering the above.


> I see two options.  First, I'd like to have both the 32 and 64 bit  
> versions installed on my machine so that I can switch back and  
> forth.  It seems as soon as I get one installed, the other stops  
> working, and vice versa.

I think you're mixing up the terms and confusing yourself. Please read  
R for Mac FAQ  (at least FAQ 12.13). There are two binaries - one is  
the Tiger binary with two architectures (32-bit PowerPC [ppc] and 32- 
bit Intel [i386]), the other is the Leopard binary with four  
architectures (32-bit PowerPC [ppc], 32-bit Intel [i386], 64-bit  
PowerPC [ppc64] and 64-bit Intel [x86_64]). You can never have both  
builds on one machine, because they install in exactly the same place  
-- however having both makes no real sense because the Leopard binary  
is functionally a superset of the Tiger binary.

Whether a given package works in 64-bit is up to the package and  
dependencies in your system. Although we provide package binaries for  
the Leopard build, it is not as complete, because currently we require  
that a package also compiles in 64-bit for it to be included and there  
are occasionally unmet dependencies. As a fallback you can usually use  
a Tiger R package in the Leopard build, but it is not something we  
guarantee and will give you 32-bit only.

One important note: if you have installed one build over the other,  
unexpected things can happen since this is not meant to work. It is  
highly advisable to start from scratch before switching between Tiger  
and Leopard build, e.g.
rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/R.framework


>  The other, better, option is figuring out a way to get the packages  
> to work in the 64-bit version.  Is this possible?  I use the GUI for  
> both 32 bit and 64 bit (installed the latter per your  
> instructions).  Now I seem to be lost completely.
>

Note that GUIs are specific to both the build and 32/64-bit --- as you  
can see on the nightly page there are three different GUIs: tiger- 
Deployment (32-bit Tiger build), leopard-Leopard (32-bit Leopard  
build) and leopard-Leopard64 (64-bit Leopard build). You have to use  
the GUI(s) that matches your installation. If you installed R from the  
Installer packages (CRAN or R-2.8-branch-leopard.pkg), you will have  
the correct GUIs in Applications.

I hope his helps,
Simon