R devel - Nov 2009 - R292 and tcl/tk

BACKGROUND
      R2.9.2 built on  power5 aix5.3 using gcc 4.2.4   (also installed: tcl and
tk 8.5.7)
     Access from a Windows XP machine using Exceed v9.0, aixterm (DISPLAY etc.
setup)

    export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/lib64 -L/opt/freeware/lib64
-L/opt/freeware/64/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/opt/freeware/lib"
    export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/freeware/include
-I/usr/lpp/X11/include/X11"


CONFIGURATION 1 (with tcl/tk)
 ../R-2.9.2/configure --enable-R-shlib --enable-BLAS-shlib
--with-tcl-config=/opt/freeware/lib64/tclConfig.sh
--with-tk-config=/opt/freeware/lib64/tkConfig.sh --prefix=/usr/local/R-2.9.2
> config_292.log 2>&1
> update.packages()
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Loading Tcl/Tk interface ...
 *** caught segfault ***
address 21188073e, cause 'memory not mapped'
 
Traceback:
 1: .C("tcltk_init", PACKAGE = "tcltk")
 2: fun(...)
 3: doTryCatch(return(expr), name, parentenv, handler)
...............
19: tryCatch(asNamespace(pkg), hasNoNamespaceError = function(e) NULL)
20: tcltk::tk_select.list
21: menu(m[, 1L], graphics, "CRAN mirror")
22: chooseCRANmirror()
23: contrib.url(repos, type)
24: available.packages(contriburl = contriburl, method = method)
25: update.packages()


CONFIGURATION 2 (without tcl/tk)

../R-2.9.2/configure --enable-R-shlib --enable-BLAS-shlib --with-tcltk=no
--prefix=/usr/local/R-2.9.2 > config_292.log 2>&1 ; make >
make_292.log 2>&1
> update.packages()
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
CRAN mirror
 
 1: Argentina (Buenos Aires)    2: Australia               
 3: Austria                     4: Belarus                 
 5: Belgium                     6: Brazil (PR)


QUESTION
1.  Are there any known issues with tcl/tk? Should I be doing anything different
in the configuration?
2. When I try a simple plot command in either configuration   (eg.  plot(sin,
-pi, pi)),  the plot window shows up immediately on my machine but the plot
itself takes all of two minutes to draw.  I am not sure if the two issues are
related.

I would appreciate any help with this.  Thanks.

> QUESTION
> 1.  Are there any known issues with tcl/tk? Should I be doing  
> anything different in the configuration?
As you might know, selecting a CRAN mirror normally uses tcltk.  Most  
likely something is wrong with tcltk (not the R package, but the  
library) on your machine.
> 2. When I try a simple plot command in either configuration   (eg.   
> plot(sin, -pi, pi)),  the plot window shows up immediately on my  
> machine but the plot itself takes all of two minutes to draw.  I am  
> not sure if the two issues are related.
This is unrelated to the bug above.  In newer versions of R, the X11  
device uses type = "cairo" per default.  This gives prettier results,
but is slower on (some) network connections.

Use X11(type = "Xlib") before you issue your plot command.  This  
usually results in substantial speedup.  This is an old issue, that  
has been discussed at depth when type = "cairo" was set to be default.

Kasper

I have built lapack-3.2 and atlas3.8.3 for a RHEL5.3 VM.  The following files
have been created -- libatlas (.a & .so), libcblas (.a & .so),
libf77blas (.a & .so), liblapack (.a & .so), libptcblas (.a & .so),
libptf77blas (.a & .so) and libstatatlas.a.

When building R 2.11.0, I would like to be able to specify --with-blas and
--with-lapack (and not use the ones which come with R). What is the syntax for
that? Which of these libraries should I specify?

Thanks.