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

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 31/05/2014 16:31, Gow, Ian wrote:
> Perfect. Sorry. I too me a while to see that, as I was looking in the
> wrong place (for link below: `gsub("r-release", "r-devel",
> "http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#OS-X")`)

Always look in current manuals ('r-patched' would do equally well): 
r-release is frozen until 3.1.1 comes along.

>
>
> On 2014-05-31, 11:18 AM, "Prof Brian Ripley" <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
>>>>
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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
>


-- 
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