R-sig-Geo Digest, Vol 88, Issue 23

Many thanks for your clarifications, Ralf.
But if

Actually the 4 options more or less boil down to two if you check what is done in detail:

.../...

then  we are just discarding alternative 1 in my first post:
"> setRepositories(ind=1:2)

install.packages('rgdal')

Well, if the normal repository binary works, then there is no problem in the first place.
And I probably commented based on the discussion with Daniel on the R-sig geo list yesterday and from experiences that often problems occur.
But indeed - option 1 is certainly to use CRAN repositories after installing GDAL framework before.

So, in my courses I usually show them first how to install the kyngchaos binaries and if that fails on some machines how to install from source - and was successful so far.

Also, what about homebrew? is this not a good way to make this type of
things easier on Macs?

Well, in the example it only installs the binaries from kyngchaos, so it is basically the same as option 2 just uses command line and requiring prior installation of a package manager (you need homebrew, Xcode, type some command in Mac terminal etc.)
But this is probably splitting hairs now.

Finally, where you say

BTW: "Linux Techies"  should have no major probs with Mac, given that the Mac system commands are more or less the same as for Linux systems

The problem is that most mac users I've had as students are not
Techies on anything. Otherwise, Macs are wonderful machines.

Comment was more targeted on "Macs into the world and expecting techies with only Linux

(and a smidge of Windows) experience to fix them up."

and just wanted to state that for a Linux techie the Mac command line is not too difficult.

But you actually do not need Shell command line to install packages from source anyway - all tools can be installed as binaries and the package can be built from within R.

Anyway, have a good xmas
Ralf