INSTALLING R UNDER UNIX GENERALITIES This document concerns building and installing R from sources. Pre-made binaries are made available for some systems with varying regularity and can be obtained from CRAN (see the RESOURCES file). R will configure and build under a number of common Unix-like platforms (including i386-freebsd, i386-linux, i386-sun-solaris, ppc-linux, mips-sgi-irix, alpha-linux, alpha-dec-osf4, rs6000-ibm-aix, hppa-hp-hpux, sparc-linux, and sparc-sun-solaris) and on Windows 9x/NT/2000 (see `src/gnuwin32/INSTALL'). In general it is relatively easy to adapt R to new platforms. See the section on new platforms for details. GETTING AND UNPACKING THE SOURCES The simplest way is to download the most recent `R-x.y.z.tgz' package, and unpack them with tar xvfz R-x.y.z.tgz on systems that have GNU tar installed. On other systems you need at least to have the `gzip' program installed. Then you can use gzip -dc R-x.y.z.tgz | tar xvf - If you need to transport the sources on floppy disks, you can download the `R-x.y.z.tgz-split.*' files and paste them together at the destination with cat R-x.y.z.tgz-split.* > R-x.y.z.tgz and proceed as above. If you want the build to be usable by a group of users, set umask before unpacking so that the files will be readable by the target group (e.g. umask 022 to be usable by all users). Finally, for minor-minor releases (x.y.z with z != 0), a patch against the preceding release is made available in `R-x.y.{z-1}-x.y.z.diff.gz' (e.g., R-0.63.2-0.63.3.diff.gz), which is generally a much shorter file that the `.tgz' files. Such a file can be applied to the sources of the previous version by changing to the top directory of it and gzip -dc /path/to/it/R-x.y.{z-1}-x.y.z.diff.gz | patch -E -p1 Beware that this does not necessarily work if the older sources have been modified (e.g., by building in their directories). SIMPLE COMPILATION Choose a place to install the R tree (R is not just a binary, but has additional data sets, help files, font metrics etc). Let's call this place R_HOME. Untar the source code. This should create directories src, doc, and several more. Issue the following commands: ./configure make (See USING MAKE below if your make is not called `make'.) Then check the built system worked correctly, by make check Failures are not necessarily problems as they might be caused by missing functionality, but you should look carefully at any reported discrepancies. If these commands execute successfully, the R binary will be copied to the `${R_HOME}/bin' directory. In addition, a shell script front-end called "R" will be created and copied to the same directory. You can copy this script to a place where users can invoke it, for example to `/usr/local/bin/R'. You could also copy the man page `R.1' to a place where your man reader finds it, such as `/usr/local/man/man1'. If you want to install the complete R tree to, e.g., `/usr/local/lib/R', see section INSTALLATION below. You do not necessarily have to build R in the top-level source directory (say, TOP_SRCDIR). To build in BUILDDIR, cd there and run TOP_SRCDIR/configure make and so on, as described further below. This has the advantage of always keeping your source tree ``clean''. (You may need GNU make to allow this.) If you need or want to set certain configure variables to something other than their default, you can do that by either editing the file `config.site' (which documents all the variables you might want to set) or on the command line as VAR="..." ./configure # Bourne shell compatibles (setenv VAR "..."; ./configure) # C shell One common variable to change is R_PAPERSIZE, which defaults to a4, not letter. If you have libraries and header files, e.g., for GNU readline, in non-system directories, use the variables LIBS (for libraries) and CPPFLAGS (for header files), respectively, to specify these locations. These default to `/usr/local/lib' and `/usr/local/include' to catch the most common cases. If libraries are still not found, then maybe your compiler/linker does not support re-ordering of `-L' and `-l' flags (this has been reported to be a problem on HP-UX with native cc). In this case, use a different compiler (or a front end shell script which does the re-ordering). If you find you need to alter configure variables, it is worth noting that some settings are cached in the file `config.cache', and it is a good idea to remove that file before re-configuring. Make will also build plain text help pages as well as HTML and LaTeX versions of the R object documentation (the three kinds can also be generated separately using `make help', `make html' and `make latex'). Note that you need Perl version 5, available via http://www.perl.com/CPAN/, to build this documentation. If this is not available on your system, you can obtain PDF versions of the documentation files via the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), see the file `RESOURCES' for information on CRAN. Now rehash if necessary, type `R', and read the R manuals and the R FAQ (files `FAQ' or `doc/html/faq.html' or the latest version at http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html). The GNOME interface for R will only be built if you specify it: see the GNOME section below. MAKING THE MANUALS There is a set of manuals that can be built from the sources, refman Printed versions of all the help pages. R-FAQ R FAQ (which is already built for you). R-intro ``An Introduction to R''. R-data ``R Data Import/Export''. R-exts ``Writing R Extensions''. R-lang ``The R Language Definition''. To make these, cd to the `doc/manual' directory and use make dvi to create DVI versions make pdf to create PDF versions make info to create info files (not refman) You will not be able to build the info files unless you have makeinfo version 4 or later installed (and some Linux distributions have 3.12). The DVI versions can be previewed and printed using standard programs such as `xdvi' and `dvips'. The PDF versions can be viewed using Acrobat Reader or (recent versions of) ghostscript: they have hyperlinks that can be followed in Acrobat Reader. The info files are suitable for reading online with Emacs or the standalone GNU Info. INSTALLATION After ./configure make make check have been completed successfully, you can install the complete R tree to your system by typing make install This will install to the following directories: ${prefix}/bin the front-end shell script ${prefix}/man/man1 the man page ${prefix}/lib/R all the rest (libraries, on-line help system, ...) where prefix is determined during configuration (typically `/usr/local') and can be set by running configure with the option ./configure --prefix=/where/you/want/R/to/go This installs the R executable to `/where/you/want/R/to/go/bin', and so on. The prefix of the installation directories can also be seen in the status message that is displayed at the end of configure. You can install into another directory by using make prefix=/path/to/here install To install DVI, info and PDF versions of the manuals, use one or more of make install-dvi make install-info make install-pdf To ensure that the installed tree is usable by the right group of users, set umask appropriately (perhaps to 022) before unpacking the sources and throughout the build process. USING MAKE To compile R, you will most likely find it easiest to use GNU make. On Solaris 2.6/7/8 in particular, you need a version of GNU make different from 3.77; 3.79 works fine, as does the Sun make. To build in a separate directory you need a make that uses the VPATH variable, for example GNU make, or Sun make on Solaris 2.7/8 (but not earlier). If you want to use a make by another name, for example if your GNU make is called `gmake', you need to set MAKE at configure time, for example MAKE=gmake ./configure (sh, bash) env MAKE=gmake ./configure (csh) USING FORTRAN To compile R, you need a FORTRAN compiler or f2c, the FORTRAN-to-C converter. The default is to search for g77, fort77, f77, f90, xlf, cf77, and fc (in that order), and then for f2c, and use whichever is found first; if none is found, R cannot be compiled. The search mechanism can be changed using the `--with-g77', `--with-f77', and `--with-f2c' command line options to configure. If your FORTRAN compiler is in a non-standard location, you should set the enviroment variable PATH accordingly before running configure. If your FORTRAN libraries are in slightly peculiar places, you should also look at LD_LIBRARY_PATH to make sure that all libraries are on this path. You must set whatever compilation flags (if any) are needed to ensure that FORTRAN `integer' is equivalent to a C int pointer and FORTRAN `double precision' is equivalent to a C double pointer. This is checked during the configuration process. BUILDING THE GNOME INTERFACE This interface is experimental, incomplete and not currently being developed. It provides a console and a graphics device (gtk(); the x11() device can also be used). Many of the `features' of the console are currently stubs. The GNOME interface for R will only be built if you specify it by running configure with the `--with-gnome' option. For example, you might run ./configure --with-gnome but please check you have all the requirements first. It is advisable to have reasonably-up-to-date versions of the gnome and gtk+ libraries (later than those in RedHat 6.0, for example). You can find the versions you have by gnome-config --version gtk-config --version We know 1.0.10 and 1.2.3 suffice. You need the following RPMs and their dependencies installed: gnome-libs gnome-libs-devel gtk+ gtk+-devel glib glib-devel You will need also libglade 0.5 or later for correct behaviour. For more information on libglade and to download the source, see http://www.daa.com.au/~james/gnome/. The sources are also available from the GNOME ftp site (ftp.gnome.org and mirrors). RPMs are in RedHat 6.1 and later. libglade needs libxml 1.4 or later, the source for which is available from the GNOME ftp site (ftp.gnome.org and mirrors). COMPILE AND LOAD FLAGS A wide range of flags can be set in the file config.site or via environment variables. We have already mentioned CPPFLAGS extra include flags LIBS libraries and `-L/lib/path' flags and others include CFLAGS debugging and optimization flags, C MAIN_CFLAGS ditto, for compiling the main program SHLIB_CFLAGS or shared libraries FFLAGS debugging and optimization flags, Fortran MAIN_FFLAGS ditto, for compiling the main program SHLIB_FFLAGS or shared libraries MAIN_LDFLAGS additional flags for the main link SHLIB_LDFLAGS additional flags for the linking shared libraries Library paths specified as -L/lib/path in LIBS are collected together and prepended to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so there should be no need for -R or -rpath flags. To compile a profiling version of R, one might for example want to use MAIN_CFLAGS=-pg, MAIN_FFLAGS=-pg, MAIN_LDFLAGS=-pg on platforms where -pg cannot be used with position-independent code. NEW PLATFORMS (Standards Hah!) There are a number of sources of problems when installing R on a new hardware/os platform. 1. Floating Point Arithmetic: R supports the POSIX, SVID and IEEE models for floating point arithmetic. The POSIX and SVID models provide no problems. The IEEE model however can be a pain. The problem is that there is no agreement on how to set the signalling behavior; sgi/irix and i386 linux require no special action, freebsd requires a call to (the macro) fpsetmask(0) and osf1 requires that computation be done with a `-ieee_with_inexact' flag etc ... On a new platform you must find out the magic recipe and add some code to make it work. This can often be done via the file `config.site' which resides in the top level directory. 2. Shared Libraries: There seems to be very little agreement across platforms on what needs to be done to build shared libraries. there are many different combinations of flags for the compilers and loaders. The technique we use is to interrogate the X window system about what it does (using xmkmf). This often works, but you may have to manually override the results. Scanning the cc(1) and ld(1) manual entries usually reveals the correct incantation. Once you know the recipe you can modify the file config.site (following the instructions therein) so that the build will use these options. If you do manage to get R running on a new platform please let us know about it so we can modify the configuration procedures to include that platform. If you are having trouble getting R to work on your platform please feel free to get in touch to ask questions. We've had a fair amount of practice at porting R to new platforms ... R Core Members