[R-SIG-Mac] How to make Mac 64-bit version feature complete?

[David Winsemius]

On Dec 7, 2011, at 9:07 AM, Adam Strzelecki wrote:

> Hello R Community,
>
> I have recently started using R for my PhD work. Aside of that I am  
> Mac and iOS developer since few years. As far I can see R package  
> for Mac comes in two flavors, R (32-bit) and R64 (64-bit).

Most of them build as universal unless you do the make/compile stuff  
on your own. The compile object code gets put in the .../pckgname/ 
libs/ directory and mine have x86_64, ppc, and i386 subdirectories.

http://r.research.att.com/
>
> Correct [me] if I am wrong, but the only reason of such separation  
> (rather doing single universal version for all PPC, i386 and x86_64)  
> is Carbon dependency for various R packages? So 32-bit version is  
> the one that uses native Quartz or OpenGL rendering, while 64-bit  
> version is the one that can drive over 2GB of memory but falls back  
> to X11 as Carbon isn't available for 64-bit.
>
> Can anyone tell me what are the packages that still relay on Carbon  
> (quartz renderer, rgl? anything else) that would need to be ported  
> to Cocoa so 64-bit version will offer full functionality as 32-bit  
> counterparts on Mac, instead of falling back to X11? I guess I could  
> help quickly porting these parts into Cocoa, so we got single (3  
> architecture) binary.

I am running 64 bit Mac almost exclusively with the Mac GUI, and X11  
is only loaded for a few packages that rely on its windowing  
(typically ones that rely on TcL/Tk). I believe the 32 bit version  
addresses whatever portion of 4 GB is not occupied by system or other  
programs (not 2 GB) and would be faster and more memory efficient if  
were used on a machine with memory limited to 4 GB. There are two  
GUIs, one 32 bit and one 64 bit and they both use Quartz. I'm  
reasonably sure the Tcl/Tk dependency on X11 is cross-architecture.


> Cheers,
> -- 
> Adam Strzelecki | nanoant.com
>
> BTW. Who's the Mac package maintainer in R project?

Simon Urbanek.

He reads this list regularly and will be by to correct my errors.

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT