Using non-gcc compilers with install.packages()

Thu, Sep 1, 2005 7:15 AM

Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> writes:

On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Trond Hasle Amundsen wrote:

Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> writes:

On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Trond Hasle Amundsen wrote:

Hi,

I have built R 2.1.1 on Solaris and OSF1, and used the operating
system's native compiler set. This worked fine. However, when I try
using install.packages() it insists on using g77 etc., which doesn't
exist on those systems.

How can I specify which compilers to use? What about other
compile-time options like LDFLAGS etc.?

NB! Please include me in the CC list, since I'm not a mailinglist
member.

PS. I really like perl's approach to module building. When building
perl modules, it defaults to the same compilers as perl was initially
built with. This seems like a sane approach also for R IMHO.

Indeed, R is pretty sane. Fine tuning is conveniently carried out by
editing the config.site file in the root source directory; LDFLAGS are on
line 138 of the released 2.1.1 source. Which particular packages have you
found showing this behaviour?

Hmm..

 - The following use correct c/c++ compilers, but fail to recognize
   this as as Solaris system and uses -fPIC instead of -KPIC for
   shared objects. They also use other gcc-specific options like
   '-O2':

      RandomFields
      geoR
      geoRglm
      rgl
      

 - The following packages try g77 without first checking if it
   exists. I did not specify the F77 variable when compiling R, since
   it found f77 by itself. If all I need is to re-compile with the F77
   variable set to 'f77', I won't mind.

      akima
      sm
      spatstat
      splancs

There are problably more.. these two problem seem to be consistent
across modules, but I can't be sure.

OK. When installing packages, the settings in the R_HOME/etc/Makeconf file 
are used, unless over-ridden by a src/Makevars file in the source package. 
Since I maintain splancs, I know that it does not have a src/Makevars 
file. That means that you are getting the R_HOME/etc/Makeconf settings 
generated at compile time. Can you confirm that your R_HOME/etc/Makeconf 
file has the compile time settings?

Aha. This explains everything. At our site, we use a software
distribution and build system that classifies files a certain way. For
text files, the Linux version is used, for no other reason than that
the Linux compile server is the master of the cluster. This system
does not recognize files that look different on different
architectures. If it's a text file, it's considered architecture
independent and only one version (in our case, the one built on Linux)
is kept.

I'll rebuild R on all architectures, and flag the contents of
R_HOME/etc as architecture dependent so that the correct version is
kept. That way, module building shouldn't give me more problems.

Thanks for your quick and valuable input. You deserve a cold beer :)

Cheers,

Trond Hasle Amundsen <t.h.amundsen at usit.uio.no>
Gruppe for basis systemdrift (BSD), SAPP, USIT

Using non-gcc compilers with install.packages()

Thread (6 messages)