INSTALL configure, build and install R with ./configure --with-aqua --enable-R-framework make sudo make install Once you have the R.framework installed in /Library/Frameworks, you can build R.app. Note that for universal GUI you will have to set r_arch in configure above to one of the supported architectures, currently i386 or x86_64. Building R.app ================ Only Mac OS X 10.5 and higher are supported. The project is called "R.xcodeproj" and requires Xcode 3.0 or higher. (If you need support for older Mac OS X version, you can use a GUI version before 1.40.) The project can be built by selecting "R" target and "Build" inside the XCode GUI. To build the project from the command line in Mac-GUI directory use something like: xcodebuild -target R -configuration SnowLeopard64 Supported configurations are: Leopard (32-bit Intel, release, OS X 10.5+, Xcode 3.0+) Leopard64 (64-bit Intel, release, OS X 10.5+, Xcode 3.0+) SnowLeopard (32 and 64-bit Intel, release, current OS X) SnowLeopard64 (64-bit Intel, release, current OS X) Debug (native arch, with debugging output, current OS X) Lion (32-bit Intel, release, OS X 10.7+, Xcode 4.5+) Lion64 (64-bit Intel, release, OS X 10.7+, Xcode 4.5+) MLion64 (64-bit Intel, release, OS X 10.8+, Xcode 4.5+) The configurations differ mainly in the SDK selected (current versions of Xcode only support recent SDKs) and file locations (recent versions of Xcode have all the files in the Xcode.app directory rather than some in /Developer). The 'native arch' will be 64-bit Intel on recent versions of OS X. To build the R for Mac OS X FAQ use either xcodebuild -target Docs or manually in docs folder makeinfo -D UseExternalXrefs --html --force --no-split RMacOSX-FAQ.texi The resulting html FAQ file will be found in Mac-GUI/docs directory. Note about binary compatibility: The general rules for R apply, that is binary compatibility is given only if the major and minor version numbers match - only the patch level may differ. When using the X.Y.Z version form it means that X.Y must match. For example R-GUIs linked to 2.0.x and 2.1.x are NOT binary compatible (and there is some conditional code in the GUI sources). The compiled R.app is usually bound to a specific version, such as 2.0.1. If you upgrade R removing the older version, let's say using R.app built for 2.0.0 and updating R to 2.0.1, you may need to fix the absolute path to libR.dylib. The nightly builds use a generic path /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib which points to the latest version of R, but this is done by an additional call to install_name_tool in the building script. Release versions of the GUI use a fixed-version path as they come with a specific R version (in fact the default behavior doesn't depends on the GUI, but on libR.dylib - changing its own reference entry changes the way R.app is linked). -- Last update: 2013-03-04