[Rd] make check problems

William Knebel billk at metrumrg.com
Thu Apr 10 16:14:53 CEST 2008


I am attemting to build R from source and test R on NetBSD AMD64 and
i386.  I have run the configure and build steps successfully for
R-2.3.1, R-2.6.0, and R-2.6.2. However, the suite of tests accessed by
"make check" fails in numerous places.  In some cases, the failure is
expected, for example not using iconv libraries so the test for these
libraries does not execute. In other cases, the errors are not as easy
to diagnose.  In one case it was an error with the function qcauchy
(see error below).

qcauchy(c(-Inf, 0), log = TRUE) == II is not all TRUE
In addition: Warning message:
NaNs produced in: qcauchy(p, location, scale, lower.tail, log.p)
Execution halted

My questions are general.  Is it expected that the "make check" suite
of tests will complete without errors? (R Administration/Installation
page indicates that errors are not necessarily pathologic for a bad
build). Is it necessary to sucessfully complete the "make check" suite
of tests to "accept" an R installation for use? I work in a regulated
environment and the initial thought was that "passing" the "make
check" tests would be sufficient to accept a built-from-source R
install. 

Any thoughts?

Bill



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