kcrisman wrote:
R's spkg-install needs an overhaul, as noted in my previous email (which It
seems to have invalid options, invalid comments, and various other issues. It
would appear we could potentially get better performance too, at the cost of
installing other libraries.
If you could point those out explicitly on the new ticket you created,
that would be awesome.
Actually, I think I should create a new ticket, for
"R's spkg-install needs a good overhaul"
or something like that, as the ticket I created is very specific to the iconv
code. The problems with R's spkg-install appear to go far beyond that.
With regard to the R graphics ticket, does Solaris automatically (or
Linux, for that matter) have Xwindows support?
Solaris supports X. There is a directory /usr/include/X11, which has loads of X
related files. However, R's spkg-install has these 7 lines of code:
------------------------------------------------------------------
# I have problems with this on OSX Intel 10.5.1 -- for now just turn it off.
# It will be good to get something fully working before worrying about X.
if [ -f /usr/include/X11/Xwindows.h ]; then
XSUPPORT=yes
else
XSUPPORT=no
fi
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't have the file /usr/include/X11/Xwindows.h on my Solaris boxes, so X is
disabled. I noticed sage.math does have that file, so I assume X is enabled on
Linux (at least on sage.math).
The fact the problem mentioned in spkg-install appeared to have been on OSX
Intel 10.5.1, has not stopped someone disabling X on every platform if
/usr/include/X11/Xwindows.h does not exist.
I don't know if the file /usr/include/X11/Xwindows.h is mandatory for R to
support X.
I know next to nothing about R, but it would seem to mean the package
maintainers should look carefully at it, and see if spkg-install can be improved
somewhat.
I'm a bit concerned at the comment in R's manual that early versions of gcc 4
cause problems on Linux.
It strikes me that packages get updated, and nobody actually looks *carefully*
at what implications that update might have. In this case, the update broke the
build on Solaris, has useless options, patches that might not be needed, and
might be undesirable .... etc.
As a non-mathematician, who will probably make use of only a very small subset
of Sage's features (though statistics being one I would use), it is easy for me
to want to see more emphasis on quality, and less on quantity.
I do feel quite strongly that more testing should be done on the code in Sage.
There seems to be too much emphasis on adding packages, updating packages, but
not doing so too carefully.
Of course, the R developers have not helped in this case, as their code accepts
the option --with-iconv=no, although the option is no longer documented. But
using that option finally gives the message:
configure: error: a suitable iconv is essential
which is stated in the R manual.
Dave
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