Make R graphics work regardless of X and other things

kcrisman commented 14 years ago

See #8834, where doctests for R graphics had to be made optional. However, it should be possible for R to always return graphics, if only we understand better how the device selection works.

CC: @sagetrac-drkirkby

Component: graphics

Keywords: r-project

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/8868

kcrisman commented 14 years ago

comment:1

Some comments from #8834: R install guide says:

Unless you do not want to view graphs on-screen you need ‘X11’ installed, including its headers and client libraries. For recent Fedora distributions it means (at least) ‘libX11’, ‘libX11-devel’, ‘libXt’ and ‘libXt-devel’. On Debian we recommend the meta-package ‘xorg-dev’. If you really do not want these you will need to explicitly configure R without X11, using --with-x=no.

But see this, which talks about the devices more generally, as well as the R_DEFAULT_DEVICE variable. In particular, the pdf output, or png via the bitmap function, could be platform-independent enough to reinstate doctests for R graphics. Though the bitmap function apparently needs ghostscript, though, which we also can't always count on being present, I don't think.

kcrisman commented 14 years ago

comment:2

Of course, if X or Aqua are available, we would totally want to have the ability to use them, via interactive output. But for things like the notebook, we really only want to generate one image at a time, for which anything that makes pdf or png should be appropriate, at least to my way of thinking about this.

jbandlow commented 13 years ago

comment:3

I'm recording here what I learned while exploring this ask.sagemath question. Namely, on Ubuntu, the packages xorg-dev and libpng are prerequisites for R graphics to work.

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:4

Hmm, that's bad. We include libpng as part of Sage, as far as I know (libpng-1.2.35.p2.spkg). So somehow R wasn't picking up the Sage copy of libpng. That is very interesting. And bad.

cc:ing drkirkby only because he knows about Sage components picking up (or not) non-Sage libraries.

bac7d3ea-3f1b-4826-8464-f0b53d5e12d2 commented 13 years ago

comment:5

Replying to @kcrisman:

Hmm, that's bad. We include libpng as part of Sage, as far as I know (libpng-1.2.35.p2.spkg). So somehow R wasn't picking up the Sage copy of libpng. That is very interesting. And bad.

cc:ing drkirkby only because he knows about Sage components picking up (or not) non-Sage libraries.

Using Sage 4.6.1.alpha0 on my OpenSolaris 06/2009 machine, I just run those two commands given on ask.sagemath.question:

sage:  r.eval('capabilities("png")')
'  png \nFALSE '
sage: r.eval('capabilities("X11")')
'  X11 \nFALSE '
sage:

looks like I have neither PNG or X support built in. This is odd. When I check spkg/logs/r-2.10.1.p4.log I see:

checking if libpng version >= 1.0.5... yes

then later

R is now configured for i386-pc-solaris2.11

  Source directory:          .
  Installation directory:    /export/home/drkirkby/sage-4.6.1.alpha0/local

  C compiler:                gcc -std=gnu99  -I/export/home/drkirkby/sage-4.6.1.alpha0/local/include -L/export/home/drkirkby/sage-4.6.1.alpha0/local/lib/
  Fortran 77 compiler:       sage_fortran  -g -O2

  C++ compiler:              g++  -g -O2
  Fortran 90/95 compiler:    sage_fortran -g -O2
  Obj-C compiler:

  Interfaces supported:
  External libraries:        readline
  Additional capabilities:   PNG, JPEG, TIFF, NLS
  Options enabled:           shared R library, shared BLAS, R profiling, Java

  Recommended packages:      yes

So despite PNG support apparently built in, r.eval('capabilities("png")') indicates otherwise.

It's difficult to know what to trust.

Dave

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:6

Just putting this info here - from this thread:

This binary package works for me without having xorg-dev packages/ 
headers installed, i.e. 
sage -sh 
R 
demo(graphics) 
produces the demo-plots. During creation of the binaries the headers 
are needed, but not for execution

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:7

See also this R-devel thread for more information which may lead us to a resolution.

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:8

Replying to @kcrisman:

See also this R-devel thread for more information which may lead us to a resolution.

In particular, it looks like one has to compile on a machine (if Linux) that has a working display in order for png to pick up the X11. That sounds weird to me, but it's how it's written. Or we have to use Cairo, which I don't know that we want to add to the tarball.

jasongrout commented 13 years ago

comment:9

I solved this on Ubuntu by installing the libpango1.0-dev and libcairo-dev packages. I had also earlier installed the xorg-dev package, but I don't know if it is actually needed here.

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:10

Thanks, Jason.

To other readers - see also the whole R-devel thread, where a slew of possible configure and download options are mentioned. Yikes!

A resolution of this ticket may end up consisting of adding precise instructions for how to make this work on a given Linux, assuming it works all the time on Mac (perhaps a dangerous assumption, but one I haven't seen go wrong yet on this issue; maybe I need to test it more widely).

kcrisman commented 13 years ago

comment:11

sagemath / sage

Make R graphics work regardless of X and other things #8868