On 21 Oct 2017, at 14:47, clark richards <clark.richards at gmail.com> wrote:
Interesting discussion, even if it is technically off-topic (i.e. is about
a Macports issue rather than an R issue).
For myself, I have found instances where I needed to install R through
non-standard channels (my choice lately has been homebrew). This was
largely related to having the required system tools necessary for a package
development environment that permits the compilation of C/fortran code and
some system libraries (gdal, etc). As Don and others pointed out many such
dependencies should be available through the OSX R develop page (forget the
address right now ...), I have some older machines for which those
precompiled binaries do not install, including a 9 year old Macbook which
will run OSX up to ElCapitan but is not compatible with the newer binaries.
In that case, in order to have an R and gfortran that played together I had
to use homebrew as I could not find a binary gfortran that would work for
my architecture.
I love working on OSX, though I have often lamented the difficulties in
getting a suitable package development environment configured -- at least
compared to Windows (just install Rtools.exe) and Linux (everything
required is easily installed from the distro package manager).
Clark
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2017 18:02:33 +0000
From: "MacQueen, Don" <macqueen1 at llnl.gov>
To: David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net>, Rainer Krug
<rainer_krug at icloud.com>
Cc: John <miaojpm at gmail.com>, "r-sig-mac at r-project.org"
<r-sig-mac at r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [R-SIG-Mac] Macports installation problem
Message-ID: <303CD3A3-230A-4D18-A190-E6C2D1160DF3 at llnl.gov>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
The OP's question has inspired an interestingly large number of responses.
One thing I'm curious about, and I don't think I've seen in the
discussion, is why the OP needed to install Cairo graphics with respect to
R (otherwise the question was indeed off-topic for R-sig-Mac).
In summary (and I think this is reasonably consistent with other
responses; discussion to support my summary follows):
1) Use CRAN R, install dependencies needed for extended R capability on
the OS as needed, from whatever source you prefer, or whichever is easiest
for R to use
2) If one chooses to install R using MacPorts or homebrew, be prepared to
exercise a greater depth of computer science smarts
3) Feel free to install other useful stuff using MacPorts or homebrew,
whichever one prefers; there is unlikely to be any conflict with R
In close to 20 years of using R on Mac, I have always been able to use
whatever capabilities R offers that I wanted to use, using the R provided
on CRAN. Nothing has ever motivated me to install R using MacPorts or
homebrew in order to obtain some capability that I couldn't have using
CRAN's binary download for Mac. This includes things like access to remote
Oracle databases, using various spatial packages built around sp and rgdal,
reading and writing MS Office files (both Word and Excel), building simple
tcl/tk interfaces, writing my own packages that link to Fortran, and
probably more that I don't remember. I see no necessity to install R from
MacPorts or homebrew. Of course, if one wishes to for whatever reason,
great! And I'm glad that people have wanted to make R available from those
package managers.
I do use MacPorts, however, to get useful software such as an X Windows
aware version of emacs, ghostscript, and ImageMagick. Indeed, I even have
cairo installed using MacPorts, albeit on a 10.11.6 system, not a 10.12.x
system like the OP. (It's probably there as a dependency for some other
MacPorts package.) From that point of view, the OP's command to install it
using MacPorts was correct. I'd need more information to make a guess at
why it didn't succeed.
Some R packages do, of course, depend on external libraries not provided
with R. One has to install these from somewhere. For example, the spatial
packages need GDAL. In this case, I use the KyngChaos frameworks, but I'm
aware that they're also available from MacPorts (and probably homebrew as
well). Could I use them instead? Probably; R is pretty good about letting
the user specify where dependencies are found.
I do not know what R extended capability depends on installing Cairo
graphics on the OS. The X11() graphics device, as provided (I believe), has
a version that uses cairo. There is the Cairo R package, but it has a
binary version, at least for R on 10.11.x, so there's no need to install
Cairo graphics to install the Cairo package.
-Don
--
Don MacQueen
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
7000 East Ave., L-627
Livermore, CA 94550
925-423-1062
Lab cell 925-724-7509
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