[R-SIG-Mac] Choosing between Snow Leopard and Mavericks builds

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 31/05/2014 16:14, Gow, Ian wrote:
> Also, instructions here <http://r.research.att.com/libs/> complement the
> manual (if you are---as I was---unsure what to do with the file you get
> from the link in the instructions
> <http://r.research.att.com/libs/gfortran-4.8.2-darwin13.tar.bz2>).

But the current manuals give more details ... footnote 44 says

This is a tarball which needs to be unpacked in the Terminal by e.g. 
sudo tar -zxf gfortran-4.8.2-darwin13.tar.bz2 -C /.

>
> On 2014-05-31, 11:10 AM, "Brian Ripley" <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>> On 31 May 2014, at 16:00, Davood Tofighi <dtofighi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have a follow up question. How can I install gfortran-4.8.2 on the
>>> Mavericks?
>>
>> See the manual: link below.
>>
>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, April 22, 2014 3:04:27 AM UTC-4, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>>>> I've noticed some confusion about which CRAN installer package to use,
>>>> and even reluctance to update to 3.1.0.  So some pointers for
>>>> Mavericks
>>>> users
>>>>
>>>> 1) AFAIK no users are going to be worse off using the Snow Leopard
>>>> build
>>>> of 3.1.0 rather than the only (Snow Leopard) build of 3.0.x.
>>>>
>>>> 2) The Mavericks build has support for C++11-using packages (there are
>>>> currently less than a handful) and some performance improvements from
>>>> its later compilers (and in rare cases these are large).
>>>>
>>>> 3) If you rely on binary packages with are not available for the
>>>> Mavericks build, install the Snow Leopard one.  Currently that
>>>> includes
>>>> CRAN packages rgdal and rjags and all the BioC packages.
>>>>
>>>> 4) If you install packages from source, you will be most likely better
>>>> off with the Mavericks build.
>>>>
>>>> 5) The two builds need different Fortran compilers installed: you can
>>>> have both compilers at once.  The details are at
>>>> http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#OS-X .
>>>> As
>>>> far as I know a Fortran compiler is only needed if you install
>>>> packages
>>>> from sources.
>>>>
>>>> Some of the Mavericks binary packages are missing for good reason.
>>>> The
>>>> C++ binary interface for the Xcode 5.x compilers in Mavericks is
>>>> completely different, so external software has to be compiled with
>>>> those
>>>> compilers.  This affects CRAN packages
>>>>
>>>> RQuantlib RProtoBuf RVowalWabbit rgdal rjags rzmq
>>>>
>>>> Most of these can be gotten to work (see the results labelled
>>>> r-devel-osx-x86_64-clang at
>>>> http://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_summary.html) if compiling
>>>> from sources.  There are packages with badly-written C++ which do not
>>>> compile under Mavericks, but as we have been chasing the CRAN
>>>> maintainers for a few months there are very few left (the main example
>>>> is BioC's package mzR).
>>>>
>>>> We had expected that by this time Mavericks users would be in a
>>>> majority, but it seems the proportion is in the 40s (%).  Thus for R
>>>> 3.1.0 most of the effort has gone into the Snow Leopard build: expect
>>>> that to change by R 3.2.0 in a year's time.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Brian D. Ripley,                  rip... 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
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> R-SI... at r-project.org
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>>
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-- 
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