Skip to content
Prev 3632 / 10988 Next

[Rcpp-devel] (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module

Davor Cubranic 
My experience is similar to Michael's: I'm a Linux guy who started
using a Mac at work a few years ago, but still feel far more
comfortable in the Debian/Ubuntu world. I would second his assessment
of the OS X toolchain:

1. the OS version you're using will determine your toolchain options
2. some toolchains are easier/"freer" to install than others

Things were very quite simple with Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6): XCode
(v3.x) was available on Apple's website with no registration or
charge, and it included the standard GCC toolchain, alongside with
Clang/LLVM compiler. (Clang is an independent project to implement a
brand new C++ compiler for the LLVM optimizing backend. GCC has been
around forever and while it works very well, it's also become quite
difficult to extend and debug, or at least that's the story I heard.)

Lion made a bit of a mess: XCode v4 is no longer so easy to get
because downloading it requires either a Mac App store login or a
$100/yr registration in the Apple developer program (the Safari
developer option is news to me). Furthermore, Apple decided to remove
GCC, perhaps because of issues it has with the new GPL3 license, but
it still (for now) includes pieces of it (its "gcc" and "g++" are
really GNU's compiler frontend and LLVM backend). The "real" GCC is
easy to install from several different locations, Michael gave a few
alternatives in the past.

The reason why we keep talking about GCC vs. LLVM at all is because of
compile/linking errors people occasionally run into with Rcpp and
RcppArmadillo with LLVM/clang. It isn't clear exactly which exact
compiler versions are at issue, however, because it all now works fine
for me with XCode's llvm-gcc 4.2.1 (Apple build 5658), whereas it was
failing with one from MacPorts a few months ago.

I do stand corrected on GCC from the R project: as Michael pointed
out, it's intended to be installed alongside XCode v4 and so doesn't
include the linker, for example.

FWIW, I haven't had any problems with XCode toolchain on either OS X
release, but the new barriers to getting it on Lion really put me off
and are the main reason why I'm not upgrading my machine any time
soon.

Davor


At Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:54:10 -0700 (PDT),
Michael Hannon wrote:

Thread (10 messages)

Bob Carpenter R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Dirk Eddelbuettel (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Michael Hannon (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Dirk Eddelbuettel (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Davor Cubranic (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Dirk Eddelbuettel (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 23 Dirk Eddelbuettel (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 24 Michael Hannon (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 24 Davor Cubranic (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 25 Dirk Eddelbuettel (OS X / 64 bit woes?) R CMD check failing on skeletonc Rcpp module Mar 28