Binaries of libraries and tools for macOS

This is the root for repositories hosting binaries and static libraries for macOS which are used to build R packages on CRAN based on the recipes build system. The binaries are self-contained and can be used on their own.

Quick Install

To install any of the contained binaries, use the following R script:

source("https://mac.R-project.org/bin/install.R")

It doesn't run anything, it only defines one R function install.libs which can download and install the corresponding binaries (view the script). For example, to install the openssl library, use:

install.libs("openssl")

The default arguments will use this repository and will automatically determine the suitable binary for your system (if available). We are currently supporting Intel Macs with macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) or higher and Apple Silicon (M1) Macs with macOS 11 (Big Sur) and higher.

NOTE: if you don't have write-permission in the installation location, you may need to make it writable or run sudo R.

Bundles are also supported, so if you want to install all libraries used by CRAN to build R releases, you can use:

install.libs("r-base-dev")

Details

The following repostiories are currently provided:

Name	Installation Location	Target
darwin17/x86_64	`/usr/local`	macOS 10.13, Intel (x86_64)
darwin20/arm64	`/opt/R/arm64`	macOS 11, Apple M1 (arm64)
darwin20/x86_64	`/opt/R/x86_64`	macOS 11, Intel (x86_64)

All binaries are built automatically using the recipes build system.

You can also use a special value "all" which will install (or list) all avaiable binaries (including tools - this is quite big!).

Note that tools (such as subversion or emacs) can be downloaded individualy and don't require their build dependencies in order to be used, so you can use, for example:

install.libs("subversion", dep=FALSE)

The dependecies are only required for libraries to link against them.

Options

The install.libs function has following arguments:

pkgs - character vector, names of binaries to install (or "all" to install all)
url - URL of the repostiory root
os,
arch - name and version of the OS and the architecture to determine suitable repository. This is only used if os.arch="auto".
os.arch - either name of the repository such as darwin20/arm64 or auto if the most suitable repository based on the above arguments os and arch is to be detected from the list of published repositories at the url root.
dependencies - logical, if TRUE then build dependencies are also installed, otherwise only the listed packages are installed.
action - string, one of:
- "install" downloads and installs the packages
- "list" only returns the list of URLs to download (character vector)

Receipts

The recipes build system creates receipts for each tar ball which lists all files included in the package. Those lists are installed in the pkg subdirectory of the installation location, so on arm64 Mac you would find the list for openssl version 1.1.1m in /opt/R/arm64/pkg/openssl-1.1.1m-darwin.20-arm64.list. This can be used to remove individual packages if desired (but be careful to not break dependencies). It also allows you to find the package name for a particular file, e.g. to find the package providing libcrypto:

$ grep lib/libcrypto /opt/R/arm64/pkg/*
/opt/R/arm64/pkg/openssl-1.1.1m-darwin.20-arm64.list:opt/R/arm64/lib/libcrypto.a