[R-SIG-Mac] Problems with read.xls on Mac OS X 10.6.3

[Simon Urbanek]

Erich,

On Apr 22, 2010, at 11:43 AM, Erich Studerus wrote:

> Hello
> 
> I'm trying to read an Excel-File with the read.xls function from gdata (Version 2.7.1) on Mac with OS X 10.6.3, but get the following error message:
> Can't load '/Users/.../Library/R/2.10/library/gdata/perl/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/Compress/Raw/Zlib/Zlib.bundle' for module Compress::Raw::Zlib: /Users/.../Library/R/2.10/library/gdata/perl/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/Compress/Raw/Zlib/Zlib.bundle: no appropriate 64-bit architecture (see "man perl" for running in 32-bit mode) at /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level/DynaLoader.pm line 207.
> at /Users/.../Library/R/2.10/library/gdata/perl/Archive/Zip.pm line 12
> Compilation failed in require at /Users/.../Library/R/2.10/library/gdata/perl/Archive/Zip.pm line 12.
> 
> I did not have this problem on a Mac with OX X 10.5.8. It seems that perl must be running in 32bit mode, but is running in 64bit mode by default on my system. The same problem has been discussed on R mailing list, but nobody has provided a solution as far as I can see:
> http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/gdata-td1477079.html
> 

Yes, there is a fundamental problem - gdata compiles a Perl module which is incompatible across systems since each system has different version of Perl. Currently the only safe solution is to install gdata from sources on OS X 10.6:

install.packages('gdata', type='source')

However, you'll need to install Xcode (shipped on the Snow Leopard DVD) before you do the above.

gdata would need to be modified in order to fix the problem (or not embed perl modules into the package).

Cheers,
Simon