[R] Using non-gcc compilers with install.packages()

[Uwe Ligges]

Trond Hasle Amundsen wrote:

> Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no> writes:
> 
> 
>>On Thu, 1 Sep 2005, Trond Hasle Amundsen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>I have built R 2.1.1 on Solaris and OSF1, and used the operating
>>>system's native compiler set. This worked fine. However, when I try
>>>using install.packages() it insists on using g77 etc., which doesn't
>>>exist on those systems.
>>>
>>>How can I specify which compilers to use? What about other
>>>compile-time options like LDFLAGS etc.?
>>>
>>>NB! Please include me in the CC list, since I'm not a mailinglist
>>>member.
>>>
>>>PS. I really like perl's approach to module building. When building
>>>perl modules, it defaults to the same compilers as perl was initially
>>>built with. This seems like a sane approach also for R IMHO.
>>
>>Indeed, R is pretty sane. Fine tuning is conveniently carried out by
>>editing the config.site file in the root source directory; LDFLAGS are on
>>line 138 of the released 2.1.1 source. Which particular packages have you
>>found showing this behaviour?
> 
> 
> Hmm..
> 
>  - The following use correct c/c++ compilers, but fail to recognize
>    this as as Solaris system and uses -fPIC instead of -KPIC for
>    shared objects. They also use other gcc-specific options like
>    '-O2':
> 
>       RandomFields
>       geoR
>       geoRglm
>       rgl
>       
> 
>  - The following packages try g77 without first checking if it
>    exists. I did not specify the F77 variable when compiling R, since
>    it found f77 by itself. If all I need is to re-compile with the F77
>    variable set to 'f77', I won't mind.
> 
>       akima
>       sm
>       spatstat
>       splancs
> 
> There are problably more.. these two problem seem to be consistent
> across modules, but I can't be sure.


So these are package related problems.
Can you please let the corresponding package authors know and ask them 
to fix their packages.

Uwe Ligges


> Cheers,
>