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R-devel segmentation fault in combination RStudio/R GUI

9 messages · Brian Ripley, Sebastian Kreutzer, Simon Urbanek

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Hello, 

I am writing because I have been struggling for a couple of months to get R-devel to work in combination with 
RStudio or the R GUI.

In the past, I had been downloading R-devel for macOS from https://mac.r-project.org/, which 
nearly always worked, however, for some (months I have in mind), there aren't daily R-devel builds. So I started building 
R from source following https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75595875/how-do-i-build-r-from-sources-on-macos

Adapted to my system, this worked surprisingly well, so I kept drawing R-devel from the SNV server on a regular 
basis and built it from the source. However, it stopped working in mid-August. In a nutshell: 

- I can build R-devel from the source without any issue flagged, and when started in the terminal, it works as expected.
- However, it crashes reproducibly when trying to load a package in RStudio (stable/nightly build) and the R GUI (always the latest version) 
terminates the R session on start. Error messages in the console I get read as follows:
I can share the full logs, but I want to keep it short for now.
 
My questions are: 

- Did anybody encounter such an issue with the latest R-devel and R GUI, RStudio? 
- Is this perhaps why an R-devel binary is currently not available on https://mac.r-project.org/?

If I know that this is a known issue, it is all good; however, if it works 
For all others without, then the error must be on my end, and I have to keep digging further. 

- Tested systems: M2 -> macOS 14.5 to 15.0 with the Xcode on always the latest version available at the time.
- SNV: Always the latest check out 


Kind regards, 


Sebastian Kreutzer

















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1 day later
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Sebastian,

if you want to replicate the CRAN builds, you have to also use the same settings, otherwise you may have a build which is not binary compatible. It is unclear from your description how you built R (there are several variants such as framework install vs "unix"-style install and they are incompatible). You can see the flags actually used at the top of ${R_HOME}/etc/Makevars.

As for macOS R binaries, all latest builds are always available from
https://mac.r-project.org/big-sur/last-success/

The fact that the main page itself is not showing R-devel is certainly not intentional since the binaries are there - I?ll look into that, thanks for reposting (you shouldn't wait months to report that ;)).

Thanks,
Simon
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Hi Simon, 

Many thanks for your prompt reply and the link; it greatly helps, and I appreciate it!

Yes, sorry for not detailing my issue further, but I did not want to 
spam anybody with the log and configuration files I am using, so I cut it short. 

I will also look more carefully into the differences between ?my? build process and the CRAN builds; 
it seems evident that I have overlooked something. My initial thought was just that with all the API 
changes going on and me using a more recent version of macOS for the build than CRAN does, 
it would not surprise me that, at some point, something
had changed in macOS, causing this ?user-interface-only? crash.

Anyway, so as not to bother you further, thanks again for the help. I am good for now, 
and if I figure out what has to be changed in my configuration to make it work again,  I will post it.


Kind regards, 

Sebastian
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On 25/09/2024 10:26, Sebastian Kreutzer wrote:
The machine used for the M1mac additional issue is fully up-to-date, see 
https://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/bdr/M1mac/README.txt

Following the instructions in the R-admin manual and not by some third 
party is always a good idea before posting.

Do please stop sending HTML, as required in the posting guide.
I did report it a month ago to Simon.

  
    
#
Hello, 

Thanks again to Prof Ripley and Simon; however, I am afraid I have to get back 
to you on this because my ?I am good for now" was premature.

The R-devel builds now appear again on https://mac.r-project.org/; thank you very much!

Unfortunately, I have the same issue with these builds as with the ones I have produced locally.

- I installed and tried the binary builds from https://mac.r-project.org/big-sur/last-success/ and 
https://mac.r-project.org/ but when I use RStudio (just updated before once more) and try to load
a package, the session crashes immediately. The same goes for the R GUI; it won?t start anymore.

- As before, calling R from the terminal works fine without any issue

- When I return to R-4.4.1-arm64.pkg (always freshly installed, no version switching), 
everything works as expected, with no error or issue. 

- I?ve looked up the RStudio GitHub issue list but found no report

- The console shows the following errors (shorted; I can provide full reports if wanted): 

RStudio:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
R GUI: codes":"0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000","rawCodes":[0,0],"type":"EXC_CRASH","signal":?SIGABRT"

- To be absolutely sure, I then tried to install the R-devel build from https://mac.r-project.org/ on my private M1 Mac mini, still running macOS 14.7 and 
I got the same crashes. Other than being from Apple, these two machines (the M2 and the private M1) have nothing in common 
regarding the setup. 

This observation makes me somewhat think that it is likely that someone else can perhaps reproduce this "issue"? 

Thanks once more for your support and kind regards, 

Sebastian 

P.S. Sorry for the HTML in my last messages. Prof Ripley was so kind as to point me to the e-mail certificate that caused these HTML tags. It should be fine now.

  
  
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Sebastian,

thanks, I can replicate the crash in the R GUI and it?s due to a missing symbol detected at run-time (I?m attaching the traceback even though it?s not very helpful). Unfortunately, the error doesn?t say which symbol and from which library - and the use is inside Apple?s core library, not R itself - so I have to dig deeper to see what triggers it. This could well be some bug in R-devel, because the build of R-4.4-branch from the same nightly run works fine. I?ll try to have a more in-depth look next week.

Cheers,
Simon


* thread #1, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = signal SIGABRT
    frame #0: 0x00000001972434c8 dyld`__abort_with_payload + 8
dyld`:
->  0x1972434c8 <+8>:  b.lo   0x1972434e8               ; <+40>
    0x1972434cc <+12>: pacibsp 
    0x1972434d0 <+16>: stp    x29, x30, [sp, #-0x10]!
    0x1972434d4 <+20>: mov    x29, sp
Target 0: (R) stopped.
(lldb) bt
* thread #1, queue = 'com.apple.main-thread', stop reason = signal SIGABRT
  * frame #0: 0x00000001972434c8 dyld`__abort_with_payload + 8
    frame #1: 0x000000019724e0cc dyld`abort_with_payload_wrapper_internal + 104
    frame #2: 0x000000019724e100 dyld`abort_with_payload + 16
    frame #3: 0x00000001971df7f0 dyld`dyld4::halt(char const*, dyld4::StructuredError const*) + 304
    frame #4: 0x00000001972144fc dyld`dyld4::APIs::_dyld_missing_symbol_abort() + 28
    frame #5: 0x000000019879574c Foundation`__NSFireDelayedPerform + 372
    frame #6: 0x00000001976615b8 CoreFoundation`__CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_TIMER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 32
    frame #7: 0x000000019766125c CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopDoTimer + 972
    frame #8: 0x0000000197660d94 CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopDoTimers + 356
    frame #9: 0x00000001976441cc CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopRun + 1856
    frame #10: 0x0000000197643434 CoreFoundation`CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 608
    frame #11: 0x00000001a1ded19c HIToolbox`RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 292
    frame #12: 0x00000001a1decfd8 HIToolbox`ReceiveNextEventCommon + 648
    frame #13: 0x00000001a1decd30 HIToolbox`_BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 76
    frame #14: 0x000000019aea2cc8 AppKit`_DPSNextEvent + 660
    frame #15: 0x000000019b6994d0 AppKit`-[NSApplication(NSEventRouting) _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 700
    frame #16: 0x0000000100009628 R`-[RController doProcessEvents:] + 160
    frame #17: 0x0000000100005260 R`-[RController handleReadConsole:] + 80
    frame #18: 0x000000010000c0d8 R`Re_ReadConsole + 192
    frame #19: 0x0000000100b76328 libR.dylib`R_ReplDLLdo1 at main.c:375:6 [opt]
    frame #20: 0x0000000100016ea0 R`run_REngineRmainloop + 260
    frame #21: 0x000000010000e54c R`-[REngine runREPL] + 124
    frame #22: 0x0000000100001c2c R`main + 592
    frame #23: 0x00000001971db154 dyld`start + 2476
#
Sebastian,

The R GUI problem has been identified (R-devel removed R_SetOptionWidth() which broke the GUI) and is now fixed (Mac-GUI r8453).

I cannot comment on RStudio issues, but you mentioned packages: check your .libPaths() and make sure you remove (or re-install) *all* packages since packages are not compatible between R versions.

Cheers,
Simon
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Hello, 

I may add a final message in case someone looks up this issue online
regarding RStudio: 

Everything seems to be resolved in combination with RStudio version 2024.10.0-daily+223, 
while it would still crash with RStudio 2024.09.0+375 (the current stable release).

I?ve not tried to track down what caused it to work again, but the change must 
be very recent. The bottom line is, however, that R-devel now works again with the R GUI 
and the RStudio in the newest developer builds that are available currently. 

Thanks once more for all super fast support and kind regards, 

Sebastian