It does seem like x11 support is the key to getting the PNG capability. I was working on it a bit yesterday and hope to figure it out today.
We need it for plot generation. On Thu, Jul 23, 2015, 6:46 AM Pieter Neerincx <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Stefano, > > On Jul 23, 2015, at 11:58 AM, "Berri, Stefano" <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi Pieter, > > > > thanks for this work. I'll try it later. > > > >> For libpng-1.6.17 and freetype-2.6 I had to create new easyconfigs and > >> patches as these libs contain bugs and some R packages fail to compile > with > >> the plain vanilla libs. > >> I'll create a pull request for these new easyconfigs, but it will take > >> some time before these are available from the latest and greatest > EasyBuild > >> release... > > > > I have also stumbled on the problems introduced by easybuild and libpng. > For reasons I don't understand there is no png capabilities when I build R > with easybuild (despite the --with-cairo --with-libpng flags). I have > actually discovered that, on my system, removing dependency to libpng > restores png capability (??) but then there are other problems... > > It's hard to debug without details, but what expect happened is that the > libpng dependency specified in your easyconfig is a relatively recent one > which requires a patch due to a bug. Once you remove the dependency in your > easyconfig the configure for R may detect an older installed version that > came from the repo's of your Linux repo. That one lacks some functionality > that is required by R or one of the R packages for plotting. Links to > easyconfigs + patches for libs will follow in a future email... > > > Can you tell me more about fixing that issue, please? > > If we cannot print to png, nobody in my group will ever care to use an R > deployment built with easybuild. > > Same here and we also want create plots in svg, pdf, jpeg, etc. :) > > > Also, I noticed that you have --with-x=no option. Is it because you > don't need plotting to X or is there a reason for that? > > We never use R with an X11 based GUI; it's commandline only :). Therefore > I disabled X as the required libs are often missing from "headless" compute > nodes in a cluster, which will cause trouble when you compile on a user > inteface / login node with X11 libs and then try to execute a job on an > execution node without X11. The issue is that X11 packages install various > "add-ons" with regard to font handling. Once you compile with that enabled > you will also need it when you create plots on a node and save them > directly to a file. If you do want X11 capabilities and the required libs > are available on all machines in your compute environment you can enable X > and it should work without problems. > > Cheers, > > Pi > > > > Thanks a lot > > > > Stefano > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------- > phone: +31 6 143 66 783 > e-mail: [email protected] > skype: pieter.online > ------------------------------------------------------------- > >
