Dear R users, I know this issue came up in the list several times. I’m currently running R on 32-bit on Windows and due to memory limitation problems would like to move to a 64-bit environment. I’m exploring my options and would appreciate your expertise: 1) Windows 64-bit: Prof. Brian Ripley recently posted the experimental built of R for win 64-bit. I’ll appreciate any feedback on anyone who has been testing this. He also mentioned that for now, “...this as only being of interest for those who only use a few relatively simple packages”. But if one uses packages beyond those “relatively simple”, how possible is today to have those installed? 2) MacOS or Unix. Sorry for my ignorance on this…but if I use any of these environments on 64-bit and installed R on any of those, this is all I need to have R working on 64-bit. How about installing specialized packages? Are the packages on the CRAN repositories “ready tho use” on these systems or do I have to do any additional work to get them going? Thanks in advance for your help! Axel. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Axel Urbiz <axel.urbiz at gmail.com> wrote:> Dear R users, > > I know this issue came up in the list several times. ?I?m currently running > R on 32-bit on Windows and due to memory limitation problems would like to > move to a 64-bit environment. ?I?m exploring my options and would appreciate > your expertise: > > 1) ? ? ?Windows 64-bit: Prof. Brian Ripley recently posted the experimental > built of R for win 64-bit. I?ll appreciate any feedback on anyone who has > been testing this. He also mentioned that for now, ?...this as only being of > interest for those who only use a few relatively simple packages?. ?But if > one uses packages beyond those ?relatively simple?, how possible is today to > have those installed? > > 2) ? ? ?MacOS or Unix. ?Sorry for my ignorance on this?but if I use any of > these environments on 64-bit and ?installed R on any of those, this is all I > need to have R working on 64-bit. How about installing specialized packages? > Are the packages on the CRAN repositories ?ready tho use? on these systems > or do I have to do any additional work to get them going? > > Thanks in advance for your help! > > > > Axel.I can certainly report the R is functional on Gentoo 64-bit Linux. I wouldn't know how to test whether it's stuck with any form of 32-bit limitations as my use of R is very remedial, but it's certainly working. R is supported in Gentoo portage. R-2.9.2 is marked stable, 2.10.0 and 2.10.1 are marked testing. If you're not a Linux guy already then Gentoo might not be where you'd want to start but the R programming language is here, alive and well. Cheers, Mark
On Feb 21, 2010, at 4:43 PM, Axel Urbiz wrote:> Dear R users, > > I know this issue came up in the list several times. I?m currently > running > R on 32-bit on Windows and due to memory limitation problems would > like to > move to a 64-bit environment. I?m exploring my options and would > appreciate > your expertise: > > 1) Windows 64-bit: Prof. Brian Ripley recently posted the > experimental > built of R for win 64-bit. I?ll appreciate any feedback on anyone > who has > been testing this. He also mentioned that for now, ?...this as only > being of > interest for those who only use a few relatively simple packages?. > But if > one uses packages beyond those ?relatively simple?, how possible is > today to > have those installed? > > 2) MacOS or Unix. Sorry for my ignorance on this > but if I use any of > these environments on 64-bit and installed R on any of those, this > is all I > need to have R working on 64-bit. How about installing specialized > packages? > Are the packages on the CRAN repositories ?ready tho use? on these > systems > or do I have to do any additional work to get them going?MacOS version of R from the att.research site can be run 64 bit as either a Terminal launched console or from the R64.app GUI. My experience is with the 64-bit GUI. Most packages are available as binaries on CRAN these days. The GUI offers a Package Installer so it really quite intuitive. It used to be that you often needed to compile from source, which wass still pretty easy if you have the necessary Apple and other tools from the att.research site. The source compilation generally proceeds automagically. My work machine uses its 16GB very well. Occasionally it maxes out and paging to disk slows down computation for a bit, but eventually the garbage collection kicks in and cleans things up. Overall a very capable environment.> > Thanks in advance for your help! > > > > Axel. > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
On 2/21/10, Axel Urbiz <axel.urbiz at gmail.com> wrote:> 2) MacOS or Unix. Sorry for my ignorance on this?but if I use any of > these environments on 64-bit and installed R on any of those, this is all I > need to have R working on 64-bit. How about installing specialized packages? > Are the packages on the CRAN repositories ?ready tho use? on these systems > or do I have to do any additional work to get them going? >I am using R on Debian testing 64-bit. Debian has good support for R, and provides most CRAN packages as binaries, via cran2deb (a rarity on Linux). With a slight effort Debian can be good for a novice in Linux. Liviu
Axel Urbiz wrote:> > Dear R users, > > I know this issue came up in the list several times. I?m currently > running > R on 32-bit on Windows and due to memory limitation problems would like to > move to a 64-bit environment. I?m exploring my options and would > appreciate > your expertise: > > 1) Windows 64-bit: Prof. Brian Ripley recently posted the > experimental > built of R for win 64-bit. I?ll appreciate any feedback on anyone who has > been testing this. He also mentioned that for now, ?...this as only being > of > interest for those who only use a few relatively simple packages?. But if > one uses packages beyond those ?relatively simple?, how possible is today > to > have those installed? >As far as I know, the problems with running 64-bit R on windows are due to the lack of a well-developed, 64 bit minGW compiler. Therefore I would imagine that the packages that may have trouble installing under the experimental 64 bit build are those that include either C or Fortran source code that needs to be compiled. You may also find that you need to compile packages yourself-- prebuilt 64 bit versions for windows may not be available on CRAN. Axel Urbiz wrote:> > 2) MacOS or Unix. Sorry for my ignorance on thisbut if I use any of> these environments on 64-bit and installed R on any of those, this is all > I > need to have R working on 64-bit. How about installing specialized > packages? > Are the packages on the CRAN repositories ?ready tho use? on these systems > or do I have to do any additional work to get them going? > > Thanks in advance for your help! > > Axel. >MacOS/Unix/Linux shouldn't have a problem with running 64 bit R and building 64 bit R packages-- this is because the GNU project provides a very mature set of 64 bit compilers that these systems can use. I personally use 64 bit R on Mac OS and have had no problems developing and installing packages for the 64 bit system. -Charlie -- View this message in context: http://n4.nabble.com/R-on-64-Bit-tp1563895p1564056.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.