[R-SIG-Mac] macos 26 considerations

[biii+rsigm@c m@iii@g oii 8p@wexpress@com]

Thank you Prof Murdoch, that’s the context I was looking for. When 
xquartz did not work for you in Tahoe, did you try homebrew or macports’ 
“xorg-server” and “xinit” packages? The pair is a documented alternative 
to xquartz, and if I believe what I read, those are supposed to work on 
tahoe.

On 2026-02-22 09:15, Gábor Csárdi wrote:

> I am 26.2 and everything works fine, no need to reinstall anything,
> except maybe xquartz, which sometimes needs a reinstall after an
> update. But xquartz works fine as well.

Very interesting! I’m curious about the difference in your experience 
and Prof Murdoch’s, perhaps the rgl-dev work is more nuanced than you’ve 
tested in your use of xquartz? I wonder if xorg-server would be any 
better (since it is quite a bit newer) for that.

Thanks all, I appreciate your time.

Bill

On 2026-02-22 08:50, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 2026-02-22 10:40 a.m., Bill Evans via R-SIG-Mac wrote:
>> I’ve been holding off upgrading to MacOS 26 for many reasons, most
>> related to yet-unsubstantiated concerns about R. Because it’s a new ABI,
>> I suspect the process would be similar to a major/minor release in R:
>> update the compile chain then re-install all packages. Is there a strong
>> recommendation for or against this upgrade? Are there safe or at least
>> less-risky pathways for upgrading the OS? Is R-devel regularly tested
>> against 26? Are there known unresolved problems, such as “package xyz
>> does not currently work”?
>>
>> FTR: I’m currently on macos 15.7.4 using R-4.5.2, and there is nothing
>> inherently broken. I don’t have a /need/ to upgrade to 26 atm but fear
>> at some point that some tool I use (be it Parallels or something else)
>> may eventually require 26 for some or all of the desired functionality.
>> I’m just planning ahead (and holding back two colleagues, also on
>> macos-15.7).
>
> I upgraded in the fall, and found that XQuartz didn't work, and its 
> maintainer had stopped working on it.  Since I was planning some work 
> on rgl that needed XQuartz, I downgraded and I'm still on Sequoia 15.7.2.
>
> You should be aware that downgrading isn't easy:  you need to create a 
> bootable external disk, reformat your main drive and restore from a 
> backup.  I did it and didn't lose anything, but it wasted a day or so, 
> during which I wondered whether my backups were really as complete as 
> I hoped they were.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
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