[Rcpp-devel] Successful install of rcppbugs on Mac OS X 10.7

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 25 May 2012 at 12:10, Steve Lianoglou wrote:
| Hi,
| 
| Thanks for the detailed instructions on getting gcc-4.6 cooking on the mac.
| 
| One question though -- I thought it was considered a "bad idea" to
| have R (and its libraries) compiled w/ different compilers.
| 
| You now have base R which was compiled w/ apple's gcc (4.2) as well as
| a slew of other "C-inside R packages," but you now also have rcppbugs
| (and maybe other ones you compile in the future) being built w/
| gcc-4.6
| 
| Isn't this a bad idea?

Non-issue to me as 

 - for example Debian simply 'rolls' versions, switching what gcc / g++ point
   to; and on the machine I type this it has been 4.6, 4.5, 4.4, 4.3 (?), 4.2
   and possibly also 3.4

 - yet R packages in /usr/local/lib/R/site-library are not recompiled and
   still work

 - exceptions to 'still work' comes only from R ("no NAMESPACE", new help
   format) and are rare

 - gcc / g++ 3.4 was explicitly designed to work interchangeably with the 4.*
   series 

 - even clang / clang++ from LLVM can be used interchangeably with gcc / g++

 - same with Intel's icc if you have it


Some people do of course insist on wiping their machines and doing fresh
install which seems like a complete waste of time to me -- I have done
'rolling' upgrades with Debian and Ubuntu since the mid-1990s.  

But whatever floats people's boats.  So in short: not a requirement to have a
binary code from the same compiler build.  At least not on Linux...

Dirk
   
-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com