CRAN Solaris 10/11 Setup for Package Testing

Balasubramanian Narasimhan November 1, 2019

Environment

• Macbook pro running MacOS 10.15.1
• Virtual Box Version 6.0.14 r133895 (Qt5.6.3)
• Enable function keys to work as standard function keys via system preferences for setup of Solaris and set it back as needed
• I do everything as root (a bit lazy, yes) and so I create a directory /root where I keep files, sources and build things, including the config.site and mapfile referenced below.

Config and Mapfile

The config.site provides all the flags for building with Oracle Developer Studio and override default settings. Note the reference to a mapfile which I place in /root/mapfile (more below).

#! /bin/sh

## From Solaris specs on CRAN
CC='cc -xc99'
CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/csw/include -I/usr/local/include"
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/csw/lib -L/usr/local/lib -M/root/mapfile"
CFLAGS='-O -xlibmieee -xlibmil -xtarget=native -xcache=generic -nofstore'
FC=f95
FFLAGS='-O -libmil -xtarget=native -xcache=generic -nofstore'
CXX=CC
CXXSTD="-std=c++11 -library=stdcpp,CrunG3"
CXXFLAGS="-O -xlibmil -xtarget=native -xcache=generic -nofstore"
CXX98STD="-compat=g -library=stdcpp,CrunG3"
CXX11STD=$CXXSTD
SAFE_FFLAGS="-O -fstore"
FCLIBS_XTRA="-lfsu /opt/developerstudio12.6/lib/libfui.so.2"
R_LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/developerstudio12.6/lib:/usr/local/lib:/opt/csw/lib"

Mapfile

The mapfile below is something that overrides assumptions the compilers make about hardware; see reference. Without this fix, expect a strange error about sysdata not being loaded! My goal is not speed, but mere checking, so I go with the bare minimum.

$mapfile_version 2
CAPABILITY {
    HW = ;
};

1. Solaris 10 Instructions

1.1. Set up Solaris 10 OS

A one-time setup!

• Dowload template from Oracle.
• Import appliance (.ova file) into vbox.
• After import, tweak settings
  • System/Motherboard: Base Memory 8G, 1 processor
  • Display/Video Memory: 32Mb
  • General/Advanced: Enable Shared Clipboard
  • Shared Folders: Local Downloads folder (Folder Name: Downloads), automounted to Solaris (Mount point: Downloads), although it is seen at /mnt/sf_Downloads!
  • Save settings
• Boot into Solaris for the first time.
  • Choose timezone, and en_US.UTF-8 as Locale
  • Setup root password which we will use for everything
  • To avoid hassles, decline NIS+ or NIS and just go with DNS (which is what I do), or even none if you don’t know what those terms mean. (The latter, however, could be limiting for dns name resolution and downloads.)
  • Go with default for all else

1.2. Set up Oracle Developer Studio

A one-time setup unless the version of Developer Studio changes!

• Log in as root. (As noted earlier I do everything as root.)
• Create a directory called /root and save config.site and mapfile above there.
• Install Developer Studio (v12.6 as of this writing)
  • Download Oracle Developer Studio tar gz file
  • Unzip, untar, install and patch.

bzcat -d OracleDeveloperStudio12.6-solaris-x86-pkg.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
cd OracleDeveloperStudio12.6-solaris-x86-pkg
./developerstudio.sh --non-interactive
./install_patches.sh

1.3. Set up Open CSW

A one-time setup.

• Install needed packages from Open CSW Project tree

pkgadd -d http://get.opencsw.org/now
/opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -U
/opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -y -i libiconv_dev libz_dev libreadline_dev liblzma_dev libpcre_dev libcurl_dev libssh2_dev libssl_dev libcares_dev librtmp_dev libkrb5_dev libk5crypto3 liblber2_4_2 libbrotli_dev libicu_dev pkg-config gmake texlive gtar curl wget emacs 

• Add symbolic link manually, otherwise, expect (incorrect) error message about curl version during configure!

ln -s /opt/csw/lib/liblber-2.4.so.2 /opt/csw/lib/liblber.so

1.4. Build R-patched

Repeat with each release of R.

I build in /root and install to /root/RHOME. Always build R-patched first since R-devel can be unstable leaving you wondering if the toolchain is wrong or the R-devel source is unstable!

• Set up environment and directory

mkdir /root
export PATH=/usr/ccs/bin:/opt/developerstudio12.6/bin:/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/xpg4/bin:/usr/xpg6/bin::/opt/csw/bin:$PATH
cd /root
mkdir RHOME ## where R will land

• Download R-devel.tar.gz or R-patched.tar.gz and untar.
• Copy above config.site over the supplied config.site in R-devel or R-patched directory
• Configure and make in the main source directory

./configure --prefix=/root/RHOME --enable --with-internal-tzcode
make
make install

• Add /root/RHOME to path and invoke R

export PATH=$PATH/RHOME/bin:$PATH
R

1.5. Build R-devel

Repeat with each release of R.

Repeat 1.4 with R-devel sources.

2. Solaris 11 Notes

Avoid this if you can. Solaris X window server is appalling, is blindingly slow, hangs and crashes. But the following should work.

2.1. Set up Solaris 11

One time setup.

• Download template from Oracle.
• Import appliance (.ova file) into vbox.
• After import, tweak settings
  • System: Base Memory 8G, 2 processors
  • Display: 32Mb
  • Shared Folders: Local Downloads folder (Name: Downloads), automounted to Solaris (/Downloads), although it is see at /mnt/sf_Downloads!
  • Disable audio on Solaris 11 or it will freeze over and over!
  • Save settings
• Boot into Solaris for the first time.
  • Choose timezone, and en_US.UTF-8 as Locale
  • Setup root password and a standard account
  • Go with default for all else.
  • Log in as user, decline location services and online accounts synchronization. Exit the welcome app and reboot to be safe

2.2. Set up Oracle Developer Studio

A one-time setup unless the version of Developer Studio changes!

• Install Developer Studio (v12.6 as of this writing)
  • Download certificate and keys
  • Request access and follow instructions on solaris machine.
• Update everything: sudo pkg update

2.3. Follow Instructions for Solaris 10

From 1.3 onwards.

Miscellaneous Notes

1. To check/install a package which has GNU Make as a systems requirement, use

MAKE=gmake R CMD ...

2. Some packages cannot be installed using the Oracle development tools. The only recourse is the GNU tools. For this purpose, one needs to jump through several hoops.

• Setup a directory ~/.R/Makevars file with the following contents

CC=gcc
CFLAGS=-m32 -I/opt/csw/include -I/usr/local/include
CPPFLAGS=-m32 -I/opt/csw/include -I/usr/local/include
CPICFLAGS=
CXXPICFLAGS=
CXXSTD=
F77=gfortran
F77FLAGS=-m32
CXX=g++
CXXFLAGS=-m32 -I/opt/csw/include -I/usr/local/include
FC=$F77
LDFLAGS=-L/opt/csw/lib -L/usr/local/lib

I also set my path as follows

export PATH=/opt/csw/gnu:/root/RHOME/bin:$PATH

so that the OpenCSW tools are found first. After this you can install packages like stringi which is needed by stringr which is needed for knitr. When done, move the directory back to ~/.R-gnu to keep for future use.