Upcoming changes in lme4

On 7 Feb 2012, at 17:47, Douglas Bates wrote:

I forgot to mention an important point for Mac OS X users. ?The new
lme4, which is based on the Eigen linear algebra library, requires the
RcppEigen package for which there is no binary Mac OS X package on
CRAN. ?It's a ridiculous situation that comes about because Apple
ships an antique version of gcc in their XCode development
environment, and won't upgrade because of licensing disagreements.
Even that very old version of g++ compiles the package successfully
for Intel Macs but it croaks when trying to cross-compile for the ppc
architecture. ?You can see at
http://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macosx-ix86/RcppEigen-00install.html
that the advice it to inform Apple of the compiler error but they
ignore such reports. ?Things may improve when XCode 4 is in use
because it provides clang++ in addition to the same very old version
of g++. ?In the meantime we will provide a binary i386 Mac OS X
package for RcppEigen.

Thank you for the hard work, it is very much appreciated. I use R 64-bit more than R 32-bit, but I guess all I have to do is to compile the package by hand (I'm on OS 10.7.3, and have Xcode 4.2.1, i.e. intel mac + clang), right?

I never had any problems compiling packages where binaries were not available, I do not see how RccpEigen should give me more grief.

Best wishes and, again, many thanks

F

--
Federico C. F. Calboli
Neuroepidemiology and Ageing Research
Imperial College, St. Mary's Campus
Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG

Tel +44 (0)20 75941602 ? Fax +44 (0)20 75943193

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