[R-sig-ME] Upcoming changes in lme4

[Federico Calboli]

On 7 Feb 2012, at 17:47, Douglas Bates wrote:
> 
> I forgot to mention an important point for Mac OS X users.  The new
> lme4, which is based on the Eigen linear algebra library, requires the
> RcppEigen package for which there is no binary Mac OS X package on
> CRAN.  It's a ridiculous situation that comes about because Apple
> ships an antique version of gcc in their XCode development
> environment, and won't upgrade because of licensing disagreements.
> Even that very old version of g++ compiles the package successfully
> for Intel Macs but it croaks when trying to cross-compile for the ppc
> architecture.  You can see at
> http://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macosx-ix86/RcppEigen-00install.html
> that the advice it to inform Apple of the compiler error but they
> ignore such reports.  Things may improve when XCode 4 is in use
> because it provides clang++ in addition to the same very old version
> of g++.  In the meantime we will provide a binary i386 Mac OS X
> package for RcppEigen.


Thank you for the hard work, it is very much appreciated. I use R 64-bit more than R 32-bit, but I guess all I have to do is to compile the package by hand (I'm on OS 10.7.3, and have Xcode 4.2.1, i.e. intel mac + clang), right? 

I never had any problems compiling packages where binaries were not available, I do not see how RccpEigen should give me more grief. 

Best wishes and, again, many thanks

F

--
Federico C. F. Calboli
Neuroepidemiology and Ageing Research
Imperial College, St. Mary's Campus
Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG

Tel +44 (0)20 75941602   Fax +44 (0)20 75943193

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