[R-SIG-Mac] vecLib BLAS and LAPACK on Mac OS 11.01 and Xcode 12.2

[Prof Brian Ripley]

A few comments:

1) Do you really want to be using an old and buggy LAPACK?  For that is 
what --with-lapack gives you, and the manual does warn you.

2) With Xcode 12.2 you will not see the .dylibs you are used to seeing: 
linking to system resources is done using .tbd files and although the 
dylibs are there, they (and much else) are hidden from casual view.

3) The instructions in the manual work for me with macOS 11.0.1 and CLT 
12.2, both on x86_64 and on arm64.  And Accelerate is being used, as the 
check output is slightly different and I have (without --with-lapack)

 > sessionInfo()
R Under development (unstable) (2020-11-25 r79505)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin20.1.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.0.1

Matrix products: default
LAPACK: /Users/ripley/R/R-accelerate/lib/libRlapack.dylib

with

otool -L .../libRlapack.dylib
	libRlapack.dylib (compatibility version 4.1.0, current version 4.1.0)
	/System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Accelerate 
(compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 4.0.0)
...

as against a default build:

 > sessionInfo()
R Under development (unstable) (2020-11-25 r79505)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin20.1.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Big Sur 11.0.1

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /Users/ripley/R/R-devel/lib/libRblas.dylib
LAPACK: /Users/ripley/R/R-devel/lib/libRlapack.dylib



On 22/11/2020 09:15, Anirban Mukherjee wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am having trouble using vecLib BLAS and LAPACK libraries in R 4.0.3 Patched (2020-11-20 r79454) on Mac OS 11.0.1 and Xcode 12.2.
> 
> For several years, I have been compiling R from source on the same computer. Most recently, I compiled R from source on Mac OS 10.15.7 and Xcode 11.5. As given in the R installation and administration manual, I specified the following configuration options:
> 
> 1. --with-blas="-framework Accelerate”
> 2. --with-lapack
> 
> As expected, those two configurations options led to R using the vecLib libraries.
> 
> After upgrading from Mac OS 10.15.7 to Mac OS 11.01, I find that my new compilations of R no longer use vecLib BLAS and LAPACK libraries (sessionInfo below message). I poked around in /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/Current/. I do not see libBLAS.dylib and libLAPACK.dylib.
> 
> May I enquire:
> 
> a. Should I see libBLAS.dylib and libLAPACK.dylib in the vecLib framework folder (on Mac OS 11.01 and Xcode 12.2). As I remember it, that is where those libraries were located in prior versions of Mac OS and Xcode. Is the fact that they are missing unique to my machine? If so, then they likely were deleted in the upgrade as they must have been present when I compiled R a few weeks ago.
> 
> b. Has anyone compiled R from source on Mac OS 11.0.1 and Xcode 12.2? Does your R use the vecLib libaries (if that is what you prefer)?
> 
> Any help would be very welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> Anirban
> 
>> sessionInfo()
> R version 4.0.3 Patched (2020-11-20 r79454)
> Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin20.1.0 (64-bit)
> Running under: macOS Big Sur 10.16
> 
> Matrix products: default
> LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.0/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib
> 
> locale:
> [1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8
> 
> attached base packages:
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base
> 
> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
> [1] compiler_4.0.3 tools_4.0.3
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> 


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford