Dear all, I am currently configuring a Mac Pro running SL. https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2009-September/006468.html suggests there are issues with Fink. I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however). Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions? (I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.) Thank you in advance for any suggestions. Best, Christian Kleiber
package management system: Fink vs MacPorts?
7 messages · Simon Urbanek, Brian Ripley, Seth Falcon +2 more
On Oct 12, 2009, at 9:10 , Christian Kleiber wrote:
Dear all, I am currently configuring a Mac Pro running SL. https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2009-September/006468.html suggests there are issues with Fink.
There are issues with Fink if you try to mix Fink and native system (see below), but that's also true for MacPorts.
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however).
This doesn't answer your question, but why wouldn't you use the released R binaries? Both MacPorts and Fink are causing trouble by design because they are installing a parallel system to the actual OS and use overrides to bypass the original system. Some people like that because they simply want a different system on their machine, but as soon as you use anything that's not in that system (without disabling Fink/MacPorts) or try to mix them, you run into issues. I didn't check recently, but MacPorts used to have issues with R because people creating the ports had no idea about either R or Macs, but that may have (hopefully) changed in the meantime.
Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions?
Solutions? It depends on what is your problem ;). Personally I don't use Fink since OS 10.4 because that's when almost everything became available in native form. Fink was needed in the beginning because very little was ported to Mac OS X but that has changed dramatically since. Still, there are big beasts (such as KDE) that are not available otherwise, but then you're not really use Mac OS at all :). Cheers, Simon
(I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.) Thank you in advance for any suggestions. Best, Christian Kleiber
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On Mon, 12 Oct 2009, Simon Urbanek wrote:
On Oct 12, 2009, at 9:10 , Christian Kleiber wrote:
Dear all, I am currently configuring a Mac Pro running SL. https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2009-September/006468.html suggests there are issues with Fink.
There are issues with Fink if you try to mix Fink and native system (see below), but that's also true for MacPorts.
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however).
This doesn't answer your question, but why wouldn't you use the released R binaries?
Because you want the very latest patches, or you want different configure options .... I build R on my Macs (L and SL) all the time from the sources, and have neither Fink nor MacPorts installed. If you want your builds to be compatible with the CRAN/r.research.att.com builds of packages you need to set up the configure options carefully and be careful what you have in /usr/local/lib, but it can be done. (I'm not going to give the recipe here, as it does change from time to time and these lists are archived -- I have had too many emails which say 'your posting was wrong' when it was correct in 2007 or 2004 or 1999 ....)
Both MacPorts and Fink are causing trouble by design because they are installing a parallel system to the actual OS and use overrides to bypass the original system. Some people like that because they simply want a different system on their machine, but as soon as you use anything that's not in that system (without disabling Fink/MacPorts) or try to mix them, you run into issues. I didn't check recently, but MacPorts used to have issues with R because people creating the ports had no idea about either R or Macs, but that may have (hopefully) changed in the meantime.
Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions?
Solutions? It depends on what is your problem ;). Personally I don't use Fink since OS 10.4 because that's when almost everything became available in native form. Fink was needed in the beginning because very little was ported to Mac OS X but that has changed dramatically since. Still, there are big beasts (such as KDE) that are not available otherwise, but then you're not really use Mac OS at all :). Cheers, Simon
(I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.) Thank you in advance for any suggestions. Best, Christian Kleiber
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Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
Hi Christian, Unless you are doing development with R I would second Simon's suggestion to use the pre-packaged R binary. On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Christian Kleiber
<Christian.Kleiber at unibas.ch> wrote:
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however). Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions? (I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.)
I have had better experiences with MacPorts vs Fink, although both have a tendency to pull in large sets of dependencies for libraries and tools that are already on your Mac. Recently, I've been using Homebrew [1] as an alternative. Yes, it is yet another package manager. One of its aims is to avoid duplicating libs that are already on a modern Mac. [1] http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew + seth
Seth Falcon | @sfalcon | http://userprimary.net/user
Seth,
On Oct 12, 2009, at 12:18 , Seth Falcon wrote:
Hi Christian, Unless you are doing development with R I would second Simon's suggestion to use the pre-packaged R binary.
Just to clarify -- I wasn't questioning building R from sources -- I was questioning why anyone would use Fink or MacPorts R binary since you lose the advantage of control over the build and yet you get a much more limited binary than the one from CRAN and you can't use CRAN package binaries, either.
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Christian Kleiber <Christian.Kleiber at unibas.ch> wrote:
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however). Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions? (I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.)
I have had better experiences with MacPorts vs Fink, although both have a tendency to pull in large sets of dependencies for libraries and tools that are already on your Mac. Recently, I've been using Homebrew [1] as an alternative. Yes, it is yet another package manager. One of its aims is to avoid duplicating libs that are already on a modern Mac.
Thank, Seth, I really like the Homebrew approach -- the real problem with MacPorts/Fink is that they mess up the system (if you use them) so Homebrew takes that out of the equation. I'll test it for a bit and see if we can even recommended that since it complements the binaries we provide ... Thanks, Simon
On 12/ott/2009, at 19.15, Simon Urbanek wrote:
Seth, On Oct 12, 2009, at 12:18 , Seth Falcon wrote:
Hi Christian, Unless you are doing development with R I would second Simon's suggestion to use the pre-packaged R binary.
Just to clarify -- I wasn't questioning building R from sources -- I was questioning why anyone would use Fink or MacPorts R binary since you lose the advantage of control over the build and yet you get a much more limited binary than the one from CRAN and you can't use CRAN package binaries, either.
for what matters, I totally second Simon view (and experience) stefano
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Christian Kleiber <Christian.Kleiber at unibas.ch> wrote:
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however). Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions? (I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.)
I have had better experiences with MacPorts vs Fink, although both have a tendency to pull in large sets of dependencies for libraries and tools that are already on your Mac. Recently, I've been using Homebrew [1] as an alternative. Yes, it is yet another package manager. One of its aims is to avoid duplicating libs that are already on a modern Mac.
Thank, Seth, I really like the Homebrew approach -- the real problem with MacPorts/Fink is that they mess up the system (if you use them) so Homebrew takes that out of the equation. I'll test it for a bit and see if we can even recommended that since it complements the binaries we provide ... Thanks, Simon
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----------------------------------- Stefano M. Iacus Department of Economics, Business and Statistics University of Milan Via Conservatorio, 7 I-20123 Milan - Italy Ph.: +39 02 50321 461 Fax: +39 02 50321 505 http://www.economia.unimi.it/iacus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please don't send me Word or PowerPoint attachments if not absolutely necessary. See: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
Simon, just to clarify: I always use the CRAN binaries, now also your 64-bit builds. So I infer that package managers are nowadays best avoided on Mac OS. I used Fink for non-R stuff, installing subversion etc, but apparently that can be avoided too. I was also unaware of Homebrew but then I prefer wine themes myself. Thanks to all respondents, Christian Quoting Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek at r-project.org>:
Seth, On Oct 12, 2009, at 12:18 , Seth Falcon wrote:
Hi Christian, Unless you are doing development with R I would second Simon's suggestion to use the pre-packaged R binary.
Just to clarify -- I wasn't questioning building R from sources -- I was questioning why anyone would use Fink or MacPorts R binary since you lose the advantage of control over the build and yet you get a much more limited binary than the one from CRAN and you can't use CRAN package binaries, either.
On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 6:10 AM, Christian Kleiber <Christian.Kleiber at unibas.ch> wrote:
I am familiar with building R packages but I have never built R from source (this might change, however). Question: any strong opinions re Fink vs MacPorts? Or other solutions? (I have been using Fink on my laptop for some time without problems but then I never built R from source.)
I have had better experiences with MacPorts vs Fink, although both have a tendency to pull in large sets of dependencies for libraries and tools that are already on your Mac. Recently, I've been using Homebrew [1] as an alternative. Yes, it is yet another package manager. One of its aims is to avoid duplicating libs that are already on a modern Mac.
Thank, Seth, I really like the Homebrew approach -- the real problem with MacPorts/Fink is that they mess up the system (if you use them) so Homebrew takes that out of the equation. I'll test it for a bit and see if we can even recommended that since it complements the binaries we provide ... Thanks, Simon