[R] Troubles installing Rcmdr on Mac

[John Fox]

Dear Stephane,

On 2021-01-12 1:48 a.m., CHAMPELY STEPHANE wrote:
> Dear John,
> thank you for these responses, we will try this... today. We carefully read the installation notes, but it is sometimes difficult to really check what was done by the students because in France, our lessons are online lessons (covid-19...)

Yes, the pandemic has made teaching very difficult. As a general matter, 
it's been my experience that almost all Rcmdr installation problems are 
on macOS. It's usually easy to help students get going in person, much 
less so remotely.

Please let me know whether your students solve their problems, and if 
so, how, so that I can update the Rcmdr installation notes, if necessary.

Also please keep the conversation on r-help so that others are able to 
follow it.

Best,
  John

> All the best,
> Stéphane CHAMPELY
> Maître de conférences
> UFR STAPS , Laboratoire L-ViS, Université Lyon 1
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> De : John Fox <jfox using mcmaster.ca>
> Envoyé : mardi 12 janvier 2021 03:30
> À : CHAMPELY STEPHANE
> Cc : r-help using r-project.org; Dr Eberhard W Lisse
> Objet : Re: [R] Troubles installing Rcmdr on Mac
> 
> Dear Stephane,
> 
> I've taken yet another look at this and have an additional suggestion
> for your students to try:
> 
>          install.packages("Rcmdr", type="mac.binary")
> 
> That should avoid any attempt to install Rcmdr package dependencies from
> source.
> 
> I hope this helps,
>    John
> 
> On 2021-01-11 3:53 p.m., John Fox wrote:
>> Dear Stephane and Eberhard,
>>
>> As an addendum to my previous response, I uninstalled the Rcmdr package
>> and all of its direct and indirect dependencies and then reinstalled the
>> package -- on a macOS 11.1 system running R 4.0.3 with all other
>> packages up-to-date.
>>
>> I then reinstalled the Rcmdr and dependencies via the command
>> install.packages("Rcmdr"), and responded "no" when asked whether to
>> install some packages from source (perhaps this is the explanation for
>> the problem, if your students responded "yes" without having Xcode
>> installed).
>>
>> Following these steps, everything (still) works fine. I therefore can't
>> duplicate your students' problem, which makes it hard to suggest how to
>> fix it, without having some additional details.
>>
>> Best,
>>    John
>>
>>
>> On 2021-01-11 3:33 p.m., John Fox wrote:
>>> Dear Stephane and Eberhard,
>>>
>>> It should not be necessary to install Xcode (which includes otools) to
>>> install and use the Rcmdr package on macOS because it shouldn't be
>>> necessary to install the CRAN packages required from source. I'm
>>> currently running the Rcmdr on two macOS 11.1 systems, with all CRAN
>>> packages up-to-date, and don't have any problems.
>>>
>>> Stephane, have you and your students checked the Rcmdr installation
>>> notes (at
>>> <https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/installation-notes.html>)
>>> and followed the instructions there? If you have, and still experience
>>> this problem, it would help to have some more information about what
>>> they did to install the Rcmdr and what happened.
>>>
>>> In the meantime, I'll try a fresh install of the Rcmdr and
>>> dependencies to see whether I encounter any difficulties.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>    John
>>>
>>
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