Installing multiple architectures for a package

On Nov 26, 2008, at 11:06 PM, Steven McKinney wrote:

Hi all,

I have set up both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of
R.app and can run them happily at the same time.
(I'll refer to them as R32.app and R64.app)

However, if I install a package using the R32.app
package installer, then install the same package
from R64.app, the 32 bit version is removed.

This is not about 32-bit vs. 64-bit --- this is about which build of R 
you use. The Tiger build supports only 32-bit, the Leopard build 
supports both 32 and 64-bit. It is irrelevant which architecture you 
use (32 ot 64-bit). You have to use the packages binaries for the 
correct build, but that should happen automatically.

Is there a way to install from R64.app so that the *package*/libs/
ppc64 directory is added to the already existing *package*/libs/ and 
the appropriate 64 bit file versions are installed into *package*/
libs/ppc64 without deleting the whole library directory?  (At 
present each R32.app or R64.app install deletes the whole package's 
library directory so I only end up with one architecture installed.)

Yes, if you install from sources use
R CMD INSTALL --libs-only

See R for Mac FAQ "5.4 Building universal packages"

However, you should only need that in rare cases (for packages with 
Makefile or configure script). Make sure you know what you're doing 
(please read the whole package installation FAQ section).

Cheers,
Simon

I've reviewed the install.packages() help and
am not seeing a way to accomplish this via
the command line.  Did I miss something?
Is there a way to add an architecture to a
package's already existing libs/ directory?


Steven McKinney

Statistician
Molecular Oncology and Breast Cancer Program
British Columbia Cancer Research Centre

email: smckinney +at+ bccrc +dot+ ca

tel: 604-675-8000 x7561

BCCRC
Molecular Oncology
675 West 10th Ave, Floor 4
Vancouver B.C.
V5Z 1L3
Canada

On Nov 6, 2008, at 7:24 PM, Patrick Aboyoun wrote:

Steve and Steve,
While this is slightly off topic, I would just like to offer a brief 
aside since Bioconductor has been brought up on this mailing list. 
The Bioconductor project doesn't support ppc64 at this time and that 
is why I was silent on it in my e-mail to the Bioconductor 
community. We currently have only one Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) build 
machine and it uses Intel technology. The reason why some of the 
BioC 2.3 packages have ppc64 binaries and some don't is because some 
packages with external source code let R fully control the compiler 
flags (like the one specifying the architecture) and others don't 
(e.g. because they include a make framework). For the ones that R 
has complete compiler flag control over, the BioC 2.3 Mac OS X 
Leopard packages contain all four architectures since we use Simon 
Urbanek's R binaries that contain quad-architecture support as well 
as the compilers he recommends. When R doesn't have full control 
over the compilation flags, we use a standard R-based compilation 
method to create the libraries that are appropriate for ppc, i386, 
x86_64. If there are others out there who are in the same boat as 
Steve McKinney and would like to use BioC 2.3 on a ppc64 and are 
having trouble doing so, let me know so I can pass that information 
on to the BioC core team.

This is slightly off-topic, but I could offer my ppc64 machine to 
build libraries for BioC binaries with configure script if that is 
desirable. According to the Mac survey there are very few ppc64 
machines with enough memory to warrant 64-bit R for ppc64, so it's 
still a questionable endeavor, but possible. (In fact I'm still not 
quite convinced that it's worth maintaining ppc64 binaries since G5 is 
now obsolete and next OS X reportedly won't support it anyway, but as 
long as I have a G5 in my office I'm simply keeping it in the chain).

Cheers,
Simon

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