2.2.1 Install Xcode and Xcode command line tools

Make sure you have Xcode and Xcode command line tools installed on your mac. If not, you can run the following command on your terminal application to install Code

xcode-select --install

For command line tools, go to http://developer.apple.com/downloads and sign in with your Apple ID (the same one you use for iTunes and app purchases). Look for ‘Command line tools’ through the search box, download the required file and install via the .dmg file on your machine.

For more detailed instructions on this, please visit this link.

2.2.2 Install of R and RStudio using homebrew (easy!)

Open your terminal application on your mac. Follow the steps below:

• Install homebrew on your machine, copy and paste this in your terminal.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

• Update the “taps” on your machine and check if everything is fine.

brew update && brew doctor

• Get brew cask and the homebrew science taps

# Brew taps and requirements
brew tap caskroom/cask
brew tap homebrew/science
brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

• Install Xquartz and Java

# Dependencies
brew cask install xquartz
brew cask install java

• Finally install R and Rstudio

# Install R with X11
brew install --with-x11 r

# Install RStudio
brew cask install --appdir=/Applications rstudio

Note: the inclusion of the --appdir option. By default, Cask formula’s will create aliases in ~/Applications, but this option tells Homebrew to use /Applications instead

• For more functionality with making documents with code embedded within it (literate programming),you have to install LaTeX on your machine as well.

# For latex:
brew cask install mactex

brew install libsvg curl libxml2 gdal geos boost

R CMD javareconf JAVA_CPPFLAGS=-I/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Headers

2.2.3 Advanced R installation i.e compile from source

This step is not recommended for new users and it would be much easier installing R using homebrew.

We assume that the users have the following software installed,

1. XCode and Xcode command line tools.
2. gfortran, pcre, and liblzma
   
3. XQuartz (https://www.xquartz.org/)
4. Java JRE (jre-8u111-macosx-x64)

• If gfortran, pcre or liblzma is not installed on your machine, you can follow the steps below. These steps help you install binaries of these programs without having to compile them from scratch.

One thing to keep in mind is the version of OSX being run, i.e take note of the binaries you download from http://r.research.att.com/libs/. Most people should be having OS-X Snow leopard or higher.

darwin_id	Mac OS version
darwin8	for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher
darwin89	32-bit for Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 or higher
darwin9	for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or higher
darwin10	for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or higher
darwin13	for Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher

#  This is for mac OS sierra

##  Gfortran
curl -O 'http://r.research.att.com/libs/gfortran-4.8.2-darwin13.tar.bz2'
sudo tar fxvz gfortran-4.8.2-darwin13.tar.bz2 -C /

## XZ library or liblzma
curl -O 'http://r.research.att.com/libs/xz-5.2.1-darwin.13-x86_64.tar.gz'
sudo tar fvxz xz-5.2.1-darwin.13-x86_64.tar.gz -C /

## pcre

curl -O 'http://r.research.att.com/libs/pcre-8.36-darwin.13-x86_64.tar.gz'
sudo tar fvxz pcre-8.36-darwin.13-x86_64.tar.gz -C /

• The next step is to download R from its source, by checkout from its svn repository.

# I'm making a new directory in my home called "R-stuff"
mkdir ~/R-stuff

# SVN checkouto R-devel or a specific version of R. The rest of this document
# will show the workflow for devel version of R. But the steps are the same for
# the release version as well.

svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/ ~/R-stuff/devel

# or both. (if you want to have devel and release versions of R on your machine)

svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/R/branches/R-3-3-branch/ ~/R-stuff/release-3-3

• Download recommended packages for R, this is available after you change into your devel or release-3-3 directory.

# Download recommmended packages
./tools/rsync-recommended

• Be sure to configure R in a different directory as to where it was downloaded. All the libraries being installed will go into that directory.

# make a new directory to configure R

mkdir -p ~/R-stuff/bin/R-devel

cd ~/R-stuff/bin/R-devel

~/R-stuff/devel/configure --enable-R-shlib --enable-R-profiling --enable-memory-profiling --with-internal-tzcode=no

• Once the configuration goes through without any errors, run make

# run make
make

# Then check the built system works correctly by
make check

• Install R-studio from this link.

Once R-studio is installed, and you have manually compiled R, you have to create an alias for your R-studio in your .bashrc or whatever shell you are using on your machine.

The alias will look like,

# R release version; i.e latest release branch, use absolute paths
# when making aliases. This makes it accessible by just using R in the
# terminal.
alias R="/Users/hansolo/R-stuff/bin/R-devel/bin/R"

# This tells Rstudio which R to use as default
export RSTUDIO_WHICH_R=/Users/hansolo/R-stuff/bin/R-devel/bin/R;

• If you have multiple versions of R installed on your machine via source compilation, one way to refer to multiple version of R and Rstudio via aliases is given below.

In your .bashrc you can have something like:

# R release/patched version; i.e latest release branch
alias R-release="/Users/hansolo/R-stuff/bin/R-3-3-branch/bin/R"
alias RStudio-release="export RSTUDIO_WHICH_R=/Users/hansolo/R-stuff/bin/R-3-3-branch/bin/R; open -a RStudio"

# R devel setup
alias R-dev="/Users/hansolo/R-stuff/bin/R-devel/bin/R"
alias RStudio-dev="export RSTUDIO_WHICH_R=/Users/hansolo/R-Stuff/bin/R-devel/bin/R; open -a RStudio"

Now you can call your R-release version using the command R-release and if you use the command RStudio-release , Rstudio will use the release version of R. Same goes with the commands R-dev and RStudio-dev.

All done!!

Try out the installation in a new terminal or after sourcing your .bashrc by

source ~/.bashrc

You should be all set and ready to use R!