[R-SIG-Mac] Please test R 4.0.0 pre-releases!

Wed Apr 1 23:52:53 CEST 2020

Simon,

Thank you for the quick response! 

>  1. correct, there was too much trouble in this. But please feel free to start a new thread about this here if you have strong opinions.

Best news leading into R 4.0.0.

> 2.  we're talking about the oldest system that our binaries will run on, so 10.13 is actually very aggressive.

Okay.  

> There is still a very significant portion of users that have older versions of macOS and cannot upgrade. Apple is interested in selling new products, we are interested in supporting people that need a statistical software regardless of their income.

Agreed. When I asked this question, I was worried about the backwards compatibility issues arising from the new security model enacted on 10.14/10.15 that caused installer signing problems in R 3.6.3.

>    3. not at all. As I said, 10.13 is already way too high, in fact we picked it precisely so we don't need to change it for several years.

Great to hear 10.13 will be the default for several years to come! As an added benefit, it is the last version with support for NVIDIA eGPUs.

Regarding Travis, I'll update the build script here with the new changes.

https://github.com/travis-ci/travis-build/blob/ab196aed5b227288a2f4dcb5c7822868b430b110/lib/travis/build/script/r.rb 

Best,

JJB

On 4/1/20, 4:03 PM, "Simon Urbanek" <simon.urbanek using R-project.org> wrote:

    JJB,

    1. correct, there was too much trouble in this. But please feel free to start a new thread about this here if you have strong opinions.

    2. we're talking about the oldest system that our binaries will run on, so 10.13 is actually very aggressive. There is still a very significant portion of users that have older versions of macOS and cannot upgrade. Apple is interested in selling new products, we are interested in supporting people that need a statistical software regardless of their income.

    3. not at all. As I said, 10.13 is already way too high, in fact we picked it precisely so we don't need to change it for several years.

    Just to make sure we're clear - it's ok to use Catalina to build binaries for let's say macOS 10.11, so it's not about what system you use to build. It is about who is able to use the resulting software. The current R builds are actually running on Catalina.

    Thanks for your offer, it would be very helpful. Travis would be a good start - it needs command line tools, GNU fortran from
    https://github.com/fxcoudert/gfortran-for-macOS/releases/download/8.2/gfortran-8.2-Mojave.dmg
    the binaries from
    http://mac.r-project.org/libs-4/
    and there is actually a machine-readable list in
    http://mac.r-project.org/libs-4/INDEX
    and R from
    http://mac.r-project.org/high-sierra/R-4.0-branch/R-4.0-branch.pkg

    Thanks,
    Simon

    > On 2/04/2020, at 2:30 AM, Balamuta, James Joseph <balamut2 using illinois.edu> wrote:
    > 
    > Simon,
    > 
    > Thanks for the overview! A few quick questions:
    > 
    > 1. Compiler-wise, the external clang compiler requirement was removed and, so, there is no guarantee of OpenMP on macOS again? 
    > 2. Why was 10.13 chosen as the oldest system instead of 10.14 given the new push for increased security by Apple?
    > 3. How likely is the oldest system requirement to be bumped in a patch release? 
    > 
    > Also, if you need help with mac-builder, Travis, or GitHub Actions, I'm more than happy to help! 
    > 
    > Best,
    > 
    > JJB
    > 
    > On 3/31/20, 11:59 PM, "R-SIG-Mac on behalf of Simon Urbanek" <r-sig-mac-bounces using r-project.org on behalf of simon.urbanek using R-project.org> wrote:
    > 
    >    Dear Mac users,
    > 
    >    R 4.0.0 will be using an entirely new toolchain, entirely new build system on entirely new macOS version and hardware. Therefore I would like to ask you kindly to test the binaries from
    > 
    >    https://mac.R-project.org
    > 
    >    before the release as much as you can. Raising any issues after the release is too late! So please, please, test the pre-releases. Report any issues either directly to me or this mailing list.
    > 
    >    The nightly builds are signed, but not necessarily notarized. However, the build fulfils Apple's conditions and is known to pass notarization (in fact the the package available for download today is actually notarized) so it should be a good test for the release which will be notarized and should work on Catalina.
    > 
    >    For those that want to replicate our setup - technical details: we are now building with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) as target (i.e. the oldest supported system), regular Apple Xcode/command line tools and GNU Fortran 8.2. R builds are running on macOS 10.15 (Catalina) with Xcode 11.4 using macOS 10.13 target. Packages are built on macOS 10.13 VMs with just Apple command line tools (this should make it easy to replicate the setup using Travis, for example). All 3rd party libraries that CRAN uses are available in http://mac.r-project.org/libs-4/
    > 
    >    The new R build system is in
    >    https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/QA/Simon/R4
    >    Packages build system has not changed and is in
    >    https://svn.r-project.org/R-dev-web/trunk/QA/Simon/packages
    > 
    >    We also plan to have a mac-builder available with similar function as the win-builder where pre-submission tests can be performed and potentially a Travis template.
    > 
    >    Please test R pre-releases and provide feedback!
    > 
    >    Thanks,
    >    Simon
    > 
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