[R-SIG-Mac] (old) rgl package crashes MacGUI using R 3.2.3 in El Cap, new compiled one does not.

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 31/12/2015 6:43 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 30/12/2015 9:40 PM, David Winsemius wrote:
> [lots deleted]
>> So I guess the question is ... why is the build process for the Mavericks/Yosemite/El Capitan machines still failing to produce a current (working) version of rgl?
>
> I think it does probably does produce a working version, but it fails
> the tests on that particular machine.
>
> I believe the problem is that the CRAN test machine uses an unusual X
> server.  I've asked for details on a couple of occasions so I could
> reproduce the error, but received no response.  I don't know if the
> server is buggy or rgl just fails to do some checks that are unnecessary
> on other servers.

I was wrong about that -- the CRAN test machine is using a standard 
XQuartz server.  So I don't know what's going wrong, but I've made some 
changes and added some tests (on R-forge); perhaps they'll detect or fix 
the problem.

Duncan Murdoch

>
> The latest error is occurring in rgl.pixels, and the underlying C++ code
> there is a little sloppy with type conversions (e.g. it assumes GL_FLOAT
> is float, which is not necessarily true), and is probably also sloppy
> with run-time checks.  I don't think the type sloppiness could be a
> cause of the error (I think it would fail for all servers if so), and I
> can't spot the run-time sloppiness.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>