> Since I have heard that R and Bioconductor packages should in the future > be built with clang since Apple will be discontinuing support of gcc, my > question is:
I've not heard that, and you give no reference. It's a pretty safe prediction except for timing: it could be a year away. So your questions are not relevant until it is announced. The documentation in the current R manuals is currently the correct advice.
Apple have announced the imminent discontinuation of llvm-gcc, and we take that to mean it will not be in Xcode 4.7 (or 5.0 if that is released first). That would mean that once that is released, for most users of Lion and later llvm-gcc will disappear (as most users will get an automatic upgrade from the AppStore, or as in my case, the sysadmins will push out an update).
So we have been working hard on making R and CRAN packages installable using clang (there were too many problems at decision time for 3.0.0). How to switch a CRAN binary installation to use clang[++] is in the R >= 3.0.0 manuals. That may not work for packages with configure scripts: for that you may need R-patched.
There are now only seven CRAN packages which have bugs which stop installation under clang, and all the maintainers have been sent patches. (Two of those do not install under gcc 4.8.0 either.)
Very likely at some point Simon will switch the CRAN binary distribution to use clang, but the real point is that many end-users will need to do so soon.
Given that R 3.0.0 supports OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard), it is likely that we will do so for all of the 3.0.x series, even though 10.6 will almost certainly reach end-of-life well before 3.1.0 is due. In that case the CRAN builder could stick with llvm-gcc for that series, but it may prove more convenient for end-users to switch to the distribution to clang before then. Only time will tell.
On 17/04/2013 18:45, cstrato wrote:
Dear Prof. Ripley, dear Simon, Thank you for this information about Xcode and CLTs. Since I have heard that R and Bioconductor packages should in the future be built with clang since Apple will be discontinuing support of gcc, my question is: - Which version of Xcode and/or CLTs should Snow Leopard users install in the future? (the last official version for Snow Leopard is xcode_3.2.6) - Which version of Xcode and/or CLTs should Lion/Mountain Lion users install so that they can still compile their packages with gcc, too? (the current version is xcode_4.6.2) From the discussion I understand that it is no longer necessary to install Xcode at all, installing CLTs is sufficient. Is this correct? Best regards, Christian _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
-- Brian D. Ripley, [email protected] 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 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
