Open-source Languages & Tools for z/OS

Rocket has a beta release of R 3.3.1 for z/OS. This will soon appear on our download page.

Transfer the distribution to z/OS using binary transfer mode (it will not unpack on Windows or Linux).

Before unpacking, cd to the directory where you want to unpack.

To unpack the distribution on z/OS USS issue the command:

/bin/cat <distributionfile> | gunzip -c | /bin/tar xUXof -

Please note that the uppercase U and X and the lowercase o are required.

Before you can read the README and use the distribution you must put in your ~/.tcshrc file:

setenv _BPXK_AUTOCVT ON

or put in your ~/.profile file:

export _BPXK_AUTOCVT=ON

After unpacking, open the README file you will find there and follow the instructions to continue.

The R project is a GNU project. To learn more about R, visit their community page here: https://www.r-project.org/

Hi Peter,
When trying to install r-3.1.1_b0002.160811.tar.gz I encountered some strange things (don’t know if the problem is sitting betweeen chair and laptop):

1. the bin/ directory seems to contain all binaries of all utilities which belong to Rocket Ported Tools.
   Example:
   aclocal
   aclocal-1.14
   aclocal-1.15
   atobm
   autoconf
   autoheader
   automake
   automake-1.14
   automake-1.15
   autom4te
   autoreconf
   autoscan
   autotag
   autoupdate
   bdftopcf
   bdftruncate
   bitmap
   bmp2tiff
   bmtoa
   bunzip2
   bzcat
   bzcmp
   bzdiff
   bzegrep
   bzfgrep
   bzgrep
   bzip2

Is this a new way to have the different utilities of Rocket Ported Tools sharing bin/, man/ etc.?

2 . Symlinks in etc/ are broken
Example:
etc/fonts/conf.d/10-hinting-slight.conf -> /u/pdharr/Rnew/dist/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-hinting-slight.conf

I didn’t dig further.

– Cheers, Manfred

Hi Manfred,
This is an early beta of the R port. The bundling issue is temporary (I thought this was mentioned in the README). Eventually, the packaging will improve.
If you are “kicking the tires” out of curiosity, it probably will not be a good experience and you may be better off waiting for a more mature build a couple of months from now. If you have a real project or problem you are trying to solve using R on z/OS, then we would like to work with you but packaging issues are not our first priority at the moment.
-Peter

Hi Peter,
Thanks for the answer. Actually, after unpacking (because what I noticed) I didn’t look further into the README.

As I currently have no particular project using R it seems to be best (from my side) to ignore R for the time being.

– Manfred