[R-SIG-Mac] R on Mac: framework or homebrew?

[Rainer M Krug]

Marc Schwartz <marc_schwartz at me.com> writes:

> On Sep 12, 2013, at 9:20 AM, Rainer M Krug <Rainer at krugs.de> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>> 
>> I am using R at the moment installed from the official installation as a
>> framework, buit I also installed it from homebrew. As I am not using the
>> Mac GUI (I am using mainly emacs, a little bit RStudio), so from there
>> there was no difference.
>> 
>> So which approach has which advantages? I can think of advantages when
>> using homebrew (updates and upgrades of R) and also the framework
>> approach (Ease of maintenance). 
>> 
>> I personaly lean towards the homebrew installation (linux background),
>> but are there any disadvantages to using the official framework
>> installation?
>> 
>> Any comments?
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Rainer
>
>
> Rainer,
>
> I have not used Homebrew.
>
> Having come to OSX 4+ years ago from Linux myself, I was comfortable
> using online third party Linux repos for things that were not in the
> default distribution. However, much like the early Fedora repos,
> before things were centralized and standardized, I found that the Mac
> repos (MacPorts and Fink) caused more trouble than they were
> worth. This was primarily due to non-standard dependencies, that
> installed all kinds of stuff that I really did not need or want and in
> some cases, conflicted with components that were already present in
> OSX. That was my common experience with MacPorts and I rapidly removed
> everything that they installed and just went to the upstream sources
> or binaries (when available) when I needed something.
>
> I can't say whether or not Homebrew has similar characteristics to
> MacPorts and/or Fink, but I would say, be very careful and know
> exactly what you are getting if you do.

As far as I understand homebrew, it ws designed with specifically having
these in mind and I must say I did not encounter any problems in this
regard yet.

>
> I used to build R from source on OSX, since I had done the same on
> Linux for years. However, for the past year or two now, I have been
> using Simon's CRAN binary releases and life has been much simplified
> as a result.

No question - the binary is much easier to handle, but one is paying
with having to rely on provided versions of libraries / frameworks.

Thanks,

Rainer

>
> Regards,
>
> Marc Schwartz
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-- 
Rainer M. Krug

email: RMKrug<at>gmail<dot>com