[R-SIG-Mac] Is it safe to upgrade to Somoma yet -- As far as R goes?

[Kevin Thorpe]

> On Oct 31, 2023, at 1:46 PM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley using stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> On 31/10/2023 13:47, Kevin Thorpe wrote:
>> Hello.
>> I saw that a minor release has been rolled up with binaries coming soon. My question is whether or not the issues identified (I’m thinking mainly of a window focus issue reported on this list) after Sonoma released have been patched in this version. I did not see anything specific in the summary of changes that went with the email notification to r-help.
> 
> Because you are talking about R.app aka Mac-GUI and that is a separate project.  See
> https://svn.r-project.org/R-packages/trunk/Mac-GUI/NEWS
> 
> As for R itself, there are major ramifications of the un-announced replacement of libiconv in  macOS 14 and further changes in 14.1 (and who knows what else has been changed without being in the release notes).  I certainly would not use any version of R older than 4.3.2, and R-devel would be preferred for package development (and that will need further changes to R which I guess will be ported to R-patched in due course).
> 
> With 14 you are likely to see silent substitutions in iconv() (which is used pervasively in R): in 14.1, Aborts from libiconv.  Although the latter is supposedly Open Source, only the 14.0 changes have been published thus far (and Apple often does not publish them for .x versions).
> 

Thank you for this reply. I have never used iconv() directly so looked it up and see it has to do with conversion of character encodings. I guess that means it can happen in the background, especially when importing data. Correct?

It wasn’t clear to me if, "in 14.1, Aborts from libiconv,” means that in 14.1 when iconv() is used it will fail.

Would a fair interpretation of all this be to hold off a little while longer? If so, is there a spot, similar to the GUI NEWS you pointed me to, that I can watch myself and not keep bothering the community?

Kevin

-- 
Kevin E. Thorpe
Head of Biostatistics,  Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC)
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital
Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
University of Toronto
email: kevin.thorpe using utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.946-8083