[R-SIG-Mac] 'Default' macos (x86) download URL now gone?

[Simon Urbanek]

Dirk,

thanks - the problem is that there is not a single installer package (for several years now), so that URL is ambiguous. Whether the missing link is a good or bad depends on how it is used. I would argue that any link to that URL is inherently bad, because there is no way of knowing that the link works for a particular system - that's why I have originally removed it with the R 4.3.0 release. I have restored it now, making it point to the R 4.3.0 arm64 release since that is arguably the closest to a single "latest R". R releases have not been stored in /bin/macosx since 2015, so anyone using a link there is asking for trouble.

For any CI I would strongly recommend using the "last-success" links: https://mac.r-project.org/big-sur/last-success/ in particular the .xz versions are they are specifically designed to be used by CI (small download, fast and localized install).

Cheers,
Simon


> On 24/04/2023, at 3:25 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd using debian.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> The URL ${CRAN}/bin/macosx/R-latest.pkg is in fairlt widespread use. A quick
> Google query [1] reveals about 1.1k hits. And it happens to be used too in a
> CI job a colleague noticed failing yesterday.
> 
> The bin/macosx/ page now prominently displays both leading flavours
>  R-4.3.0-arm64.pkg
>  R-4.3.0-x86_64.pkg
> which makes sense give the architecture choices. We can of course update the
> CI script, and likely will.
> 
> But given that this was apparently a somewhat widely-used URL to fetch R on
> macOS, may I suggest that the convenience link be reestablished as a courtesy?
> 
> Best,  Dirk
> 
> https://github.com/search?q=macosx%2FR-latest.pkg&type=code
> 
> -- 
> dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org
>