[R] RH6,2 / make check / f2c

[Christian Posse]

I would like first to thank Prof. Ripley for his hint.

R 1.01 built from the source and all contrib packages
work fine when using gcc-2.95.x  Too bad RedHat
stopped shipping it along ecgs since 5.2.

Two questions come from all the comments:

- is f2c unsafe? I was not able to find any comment
in the R distribution about what I just learned from
Prof Ripley and Oksanen. This would be certainly
an enlightening admission.

- My earlier installation of R with f2c produces
no error  when checking with "make check".
Can I conlcude that I had a safe installation?

Thanks again for any help.
Christian


----- Original Message -----
From: "Prof Brian D Ripley" <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk>
To: "Jari Oksanen" <jhoksane at ecology.helsinki.fi>
Cc: "Christian Posse" <posse at talariainc.com>; "r-help"
<r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2000 11:25 PM
Subject: Re: [R] problem on upgrading to RH6.2 (One solution)


> On Fri, 26 May 2000, Jari Oksanen wrote:
>
> >
> > posse at talariainc.com said:
> > > I finally found a way around though the underlying problem persists.
> > > It seems that the problem is with g77. Only the packages using FORTRAN
> > > failed to be loaded correctly in either way (R from rpm or built from
> > > scratch).
> >
> > > The solution was to build R from the source using the flag
> >
> > > --with-f2c
> >
> > > with ./configure.
> >
> > > All contrib packages installed with this version of R are loaded
> > > correctly and, as far as I can superficially see, work. make check
> > > gives positive feedback.
> >
> > I am not sure this is safe. At least I was warned when I used a
> similar shortcut some years ago when I had some trouble with g77
> on MS-DOS (djgpp port). g77 used to apply f2c libraries in her
> childhood, but has grown independent since then and so the libraries
> forked (libf2c and libf2g). I think that there *may* be a danger of
> strange behaviour in some other places if we just resort to drop
> in f2c-libraries in g77, and at worst, this behaviour remains undetected.
>
> I think you mean libg2c.a.  That's not what --with-f2c does though:
> it forces the installation routines to translate Fortran to C and then use
> the C compiler on them.  That is, it uses f2c not just its libraries.
>
> However, I still don't think this is a good idea. f2c + C accepts lots of
> code that is not valid Fortran, so in particular is a bad idea for anyone
> developing code.  And f2c makes lots of assumptions about how the Fortran
> compiler should operate that are not always true of the real compiler.
> (Trailing underlines, passing character strings in C style, for two.)
> More generally, a real Fortran compiler should generate better code (and
on
> the main platforms used for scientific computing the Fortran compilers
have
> had enormous effort expended on them, whereas g77 seems a poor cousin to
> gcc).
>
> > Not all Fortran fails. For instance, MASS (or all of VR_*) loads
> > (and runs) beautifully, although it uses many Fortran routines.
>
> MASS does not use Fortran on R.  The S-PLUS versions do, but I donated the
> relevant code to modreg in R.  (And VR_* would not be valid Fortran
> symbols.)
>
> The problem here is that it appears that the Fortran system on (some?)
> RH6.2 installations is broken.  My reaction whenever that happens on Linux
> (far too frequently to be comfortable) is to get the latest version, so I
> would suggest using gcc 2.95.2 which has been around and stable for quite
a
> while.  (BTW, g77 in egcs-1.1.2 aka 2.91.66 had problems on both Solaris
> and Windows with R, so I was relieved to its passing.)
>
> --
> 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 272860 (secr)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595
>
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