Dealing with Catalina

Developers
195

If I had a Mac, I would. But I am not much use when I have to borrow someone else’s machine (that has Catalina) to respond to posts with test cases.

I can say that

Rcpp::sourceCpp(code = 
'
#include <Rcpp.h>
using namespace Rcpp; 

// [[Rcpp::export]]
int throw_exception() { 
  std::stringstream errmsg; errmsg << "this is an exception";
  throw std::domain_error(errmsg.str()); 
  return 0;
}
'
)

throw_exception()

works correctly (i.e. says “this is an exception”) if

  • One uses clang++ on Linux
  • One uses homebrew’s R on a Mac with Catalina
  • One uses Xcode’s clang++ on a Mac with Catalina, provided no other C++ packages from CRAN have previously been loaded

And the problem has not much to do with Stan, except that we call Rcpp::sourceCpp and inline::cxxfunction and throw exceptions at runtime. But even packages like rstanarm wiith Stan programs that are compiled in advance on CRAN are affected.