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

[Anirban Mukherjee]

Dear Prof Ripley,

1. Ok. I will not use LAPACK from the Accelerate library.

2. Ok. It would be great, when the CRAN team has the time, to update the FAQ.

3. I need to pass -Wno-implicit-function-declaration to have the compiled R use the Accelerate BLAS. Without the flag (even without --with-lapack) R compiles fine but uses the included stock BLAS.

Best,
Anirban

> On 26 Nov 2020, at 4:22 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> 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