R devel - Oct 2014 - gsl package on mavericks

hello

I maintain the gsl R package, and many users have recently reported that
the package
does not install from source under macosx 10.9 ("mavericks").

Users typically install the gnu GSL library and are able to compile and run
a small "hello world" program which executes some of the Bessel
functionality
of the library; but under mavericks the configure script (which uses
gsl-config as a probe) does not seem to detect which version of the
installed library is, giving a "Need GSL version >= 1.12" error. 
The most
recent version of the gnu GSL library is 1.16.

The CRAN package check page shows that the gsl R package is clean under
every other architecture.

There is a thread on stackoverflow about this very issue:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24781125/installing-r-gsl-package-on-mac

where several people post either workarounds or suggestions.  However, it
is not clear whether there is some defect in the configure.ac script, or
the problem is due to mavericks, or it might even lie in newer versions of
the gnu GSL library.

The package gsl_1.9-10.tar.gz  installs correctly from source for me on my
system, macosx 10.9.4, R-3.1.1, GSL-1.16, so it is difficult for me to
investigate users' reports.


Can anyone advise?


-- 
Robin Hankin
Neutral theorist
hankin.robin at gmail.com

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I have only skimmed this issue.  But you check gsl version by compiling a
program with
#include <gsl/gsl.h>
This assumes, as far as I can see, that gsl/gsl.h is in the search path (I
know, it is the wrong technical term) of the compiler, which may not be the
case for a non-standard installation.  Above this code you end up with a
variable called GSL_CFLAGS.  Somehow, I would expect that the test program
has to be compiled using the settings revealed by GSL_CFLAGS, but I don't
see that happening (I am not an expert on autoconf, so it may happen behind
the scenes).  I think you need to somehow pass GSL_CFLAGS to AC_LANG_SOURCE.

This seems consistent with the reports on SO, where some people are using
brew which installs it in a location not part of the standard search path,
I think.

Best,
Kasper

On Wed, Oct 1, 2014 at 4:58 PM, robin hankin <hankin.robin at gmail.com>
wrote:
> hello
>
> I maintain the gsl R package, and many users have recently reported that
> the package
> does not install from source under macosx 10.9 ("mavericks").
>
> Users typically install the gnu GSL library and are able to compile and run
> a small "hello world" program which executes some of the Bessel
> functionality
> of the library; but under mavericks the configure script (which uses
> gsl-config as a probe) does not seem to detect which version of the
> installed library is, giving a "Need GSL version >= 1.12"
error.  The most
> recent version of the gnu GSL library is 1.16.
>
> The CRAN package check page shows that the gsl R package is clean under
> every other architecture.
>
> There is a thread on stackoverflow about this very issue:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24781125/installing-r-gsl-package-on-mac
>
> where several people post either workarounds or suggestions.  However, it
> is not clear whether there is some defect in the configure.ac script, or
> the problem is due to mavericks, or it might even lie in newer versions of
> the gnu GSL library.
>
> The package gsl_1.9-10.tar.gz  installs correctly from source for me on my
> system, macosx 10.9.4, R-3.1.1, GSL-1.16, so it is difficult for me to
> investigate users' reports.
>
>
> Can anyone advise?
>
>
> --
> Robin Hankin
> Neutral theorist
> hankin.robin at gmail.com
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
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