Building packages under R >= 2.7.0 (issue with gcc-4.2)

Vincent,

I'm sorry but somehow I have no idea what you're talking about. Your  
package "actuar" (in the most recent version 0.9-7 on CRAN) passes  
"make check" with R 2.7.0 and it is available in binary form from CRAN  
as well, see:

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/actuar/index.html

more comments inline:

My package checked and buit fine under 2.6.2 on Leopard 10.5.2.  
Under 2.7.0, 2.7.0 patched (2008-05-29) and R-devel (2008-05-30) it  
always fails at the "checking whether package 'actuar' can be  
installed"  step. The 00install.log tells me that R tried to call  
gcc-4.2, which I don't have. It is my understanding from reading the  
documentation that this version of gcc is not mandatory. I have  
XCode v. 3.0 installed.

The compiler used in the released versions is gcc (which is by default  
gcc-4.0 even if you installed gcc-4.2). You can map gcc to gcc-4.2 if  
you desire so, but that is a non-standard setup.

Furthermore, I noticed that, for 2.7.0, the /Library/Frameworks/ 
R.framework/Resources/etc/*/Makeconf files refer to gcc for i386 and  
ppc, and to gcc-4.2 on x86_64. For 2.7.0 patched and R-devel, the  
Makeconf files refer to gcc-4.2 on all architectures.

Not in the official binaries that I am releasing:

/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/etc/ppc/Makeconf:
CC = gcc -arch ppc -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk -mmacosx- 
version-min=10.4 -std=gnu99

/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/etc/i386/Makeconf:
CC = gcc -arch i386 -isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk -mmacosx- 
version-min=10.4 -std=gnu99

I can't see what I did wrong, but then I'm certainly not the first  
one to compile a package from source since the release of 2.7.0. Any  
help would be appreciated.

You'll have to tell us exactly which R build are you using. CRAN  
binaries are clearly not configured the way you are describing, so you  
must be using some custom or experimental build in which case you're  
on you own ...

Nonetheless, even in the case of using gcc-4.2 your package installs,  
so I have no idea what you are concerned about.

Cheers,
Simon