[R-SIG-Mac] R 3.0.2/3.0.3 source install problems on OS X 10.9.2

[Bryan Renne]

Dear Simon:

On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 11:23 AM, Simon Urbanek
<simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:
> Bryan,
>
> based on the gist output I think I have a candidate - please check that you're not re-defining TMP or TMPDIR to a relative path - that would break pretty much anything. Check with
>
> set | grep 'T*MP'
>
> This must be either undefined or the paths *must* be absolute, i.e. start with a slash /
>
> Other replies below, but I think the above may be the main issue.

That's it!  I can't believe you noticed that.  Thank you so much for your help.

I had executed "export TEMPDIR=." for some other program (I think
latex2html?) that requires some non-null setting and, after clearing
this setting so that TEMPDIR is unset, the installation of recommended
packages completed and the make script finished without errors.  Looks
like an absolute path should be used as you suggest.

Problem solved.  Thank you so much for your help with this.

>
> On Mar 10, 2014, at 12:53 AM, Bryan Renne <brenne at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Simon.  Thank you for your reply.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 6:41 PM, Simon Urbanek
>> <simon.urbanek at r-project.org> wrote:
>>> Bryan,
>>>
>>> On Mar 9, 2014, at 3:59 PM, Bryan Renne <brenne at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thank you for your reply, Peter.
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 9, 2014 at 3:31 AM, peter dalgaard <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 09 Mar 2014, at 00:21 , Bryan Renne <brenne at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi there.  I am having compilation problems with R 3.0.2 (and R 3.0.3) on
>>>>>> OS X 10.9.2.
>>>>>
>>>>> On homebrew.... (Would have been useful to say up front.)
>>>>
>>>> Actually, no.  This is *not* a homebrew specific problem,
>>>
>>> It *is* as you even point yourself further down. It doesn't occur on a clean OS X system.
>>
>> OK, so to rule out any possible homebrew issues, I used the homebrew
>> uninstall script to delete homebrew and all homebrew-installed stuff
>> (https://gist.github.com/mxcl/1173223).  This script wipes the system
>> clean of homebrew.
>>
>
> Thanks, it would be sufficient to just rename /usr/local and re-install the gfortran from CRAN.
>
> I cannot reproduce the issue with exactly your settings on a clean machine, so it must be some custom configuration of yours. I suspect you may have set TMP/TMPDIR to . which is invalid - please check.
>
> Thanks,
> Simon

Acknowledged.  Will take the point about /usr/local under advisement
going forward.

Thank you again for your time.

>
>> I then installed gfortran 4.8.2 binaries using the provided pkg file
>> for OS X Mavericks (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortranBinaries#MacOS).
>>
>> I then downloaded R-3.0.3.tar.gz from the main page
>> (http://cran.r-project.org/).  I untarred, configured (with options
>> "--with-aqua --enable-R-framework --with-lapack") and ran make.  I
>> received the same error as before.  Here is the tail end of the "make"
>> output:
>>
>> begin installing recommended package MASS
>> Warning in read.dcf(fd <- file.path(pkg, "DESCRIPTION")) :
>>  cannot open compressed file
>> './RtmpwOScIp/R.INSTALL588267e46267/MASS/DESCRIPTION', probable reason
>> 'No such file or directory'
>> Error: error reading file './RtmpwOScIp/R.INSTALL588267e46267/MASS/DESCRIPTION'
>> make[2]: *** [MASS.ts] Error 1
>> make[1]: *** [recommended-packages] Error 2
>> make: *** [stamp-recommended] Error 2
>>
>> Please see the following gist for full details of the system
>> configuration and output of "configure" and "make":
>>
>> https://gist.github.com/bprenne/9459571
>>
>> In particular, you'll notice in the section for make the error I
>> quoted above.  Also, at the very bottom of the gist, I have provided
>> what I think shows that the error is happening with the "R CMD INSTALL
>> MASS.tgz" step in the installation of recommended packages (somewhere
>> deep within the Makefile steps).
>>
>>>>>> [[...snip...]
>>>>>> I also tried setting R_INSTALL_TAR to the system tar or to a
>>>>>> homebrew-installed gnutar.  Neither helped.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any suggestions on how I might proceed?
>>>>>
>>>>> Hmm, difficult to tell. If push comes to shove, you could try getting more info out of the INSTALL process (inject a debug(tools:::.install_packages), I suppose, but it is a bit beyond me currently). But first, I'd check what Makeconf sets the TAR variable to.
>>>>
>>>> Thank you for these suggestions.  Makeconf contains this line:
>>>>
>>>> TAR = /usr/local/bin/gtar
>>>>
>>>> This is the homebrew-installed gnutar.  However, is the R binary
>>>> (which has properly compiled and is the source of the error in library
>>>> installation) reading Makeconf to determine how to untar the library
>>>> .tgz?
>>>>
>>>
>>> No, it is set in etc/Renviron which is in turn populated via configure by the value you see in Makeconf.
>>>
>>> Try setting
>>>
>>> TAR=/usr/bin/tar
>>>
>>> since system tar normally works. But that may be only the tip of the iceberg, we can't tell what else you installed that breaks otherwise working system. If in doubt, share the list with us so we can try to replicate it.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Simon
>>
>> Thanks for this suggestion with setting the TAR variable.  As you can
>> see from the gist (https://gist.github.com/bprenne/9459571), this is
>> now the default value because homebrew has been wiped from the system.
>> However, even with this value, the problem still obtains.
>>
>> I've tried to provide everything I can think will be useful in the gist.
>>
>> Is there something more I can provide or some way I can get more
>> fine-grained debugging information to help in diagnosis?
>>
>> I appreciate your time and any thoughts you might have that you think
>> would help.
>>
>