[R-SIG-Mac] RQuantLib missing binaries

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Kyle Matoba wrote:

> Just wondering if there was any plans to get this up and running again:
>
> http://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macosx-ix86/RQuantLib-00install.html
>
> If not, I will compile it myself.

You may not find it easy.  The issue is that RQuantLib depends on 
QuantLib, in fact on a recent version of QuantLib (later than the one 
in the current Fedora distribution, for example).  QuantLib is a large 
C++ suite of programs, and I've failed to compile it on Linux in the 
past, and when I have succeeded the package failed its own tests.

> I don't see anything in the changelog to indicate that this is
> deliberate.  Could whomever is compiling for macs look into this?

It is done by Simon Urbanek's autobuiilder.  I don't see anything 
which indicates that it is not deliberate ....

If you look at the packages which are not being built by the Mac 
autobuiilder you will see three main reasons why:

(a) the package fails its tests, e.g. lme4
(b) the package depends on other packages which are not available on 
the build machine, usually from BioC or OmegaHat.
(c) the package depends on external software.

RQuantLib is in category (c), and very few such packages are being 
built (not even Simon's own packages GDD and proj4).  If you look at 
the CRAN test logs, the only platform on which RQuantLib is being 
installed is 32-bit Windows (not even Debian on which it is developed) 
-- and that is because the author supplied a pre-compiled Windows 
version of QuantLib.

I suspect you seriously underestimate the work which goes into 
providing R binary packages.  I know (I used to do it on Windows and 
still contribute there) just how thankless (literally and 
metaphorically) it is.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595