Gregory, On Apr 5, 2008, at 7:45 PM, Gregory Warnes wrote:
> For some automated software building, I need to be able to execute > older versions of R via the command line. Currently, even if I > provide the full path to the R shell script, the current version of > R gets executed. For instance, > > /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.4/Resources/bin/R -- > version > R version 2.6.2 (2008-02-08) > Copyright (C) 2008 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing > ISBN 3-900051-07-0 > [...] > > and > > [Straight:~] warnes% /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.4/ > Resources/bin/R RHOME > /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources > > and > > [Straight:~] warnes% /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.4/ > Resources/bin/R > > R version 2.6.2 (2008-02-08) > Copyright (C) 2008 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing > ISBN 3-900051-07-0 > [...] > > > Is there a particular reason why the R shell script defines > > R_HOME_DIR=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources > > instead of > > VERSION=2.4 # or whatever > R_HOME_DIR=/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/$VERSION$/ > Resources > > with similar changes through the rest of the file? Mostly compatibility. A global script would stop working after an update if it used hard-coded versions. External tools should make no assumptions about the internal versioning scheme. Only embedding applications (e.g. the GUI) rely on the versioning scheme and they will obtain R_HOME from the linked library so they are not affected (ever since the framework has an ID - if you want to use versions before the ID introduction, you may have to add one). Starting R from a different version than the current one is not tested or supported, and may not work - in particular older versions won't (some versions were explicitly using the "current" version regardless of the versioned path). Clearly, you're free to compile R with a different framework path and you're also free to modify the script - it's all up to you - but that is not the default setup. I'm not quite sure why it is an issue in your case - as with all Mac OS X frameworks, the established (Apple) way to switch versions is by changing the Versions/Current symlink and that is supported. Cheers, Simon _______________________________________________ R-SIG-Mac mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
