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Installing R with the pkg installer doesn't require XQuartz. However, install R with Homebrew requires to install XQuartz first.

Can anybody explain why please?

Is there a way to install R without Xquartz with Homebrew?

I need to decide whether to use Homebrew, or install R, Python etc with their pkg installers before applying to multiple computers (running OS X 10.8).

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3 Answers3

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If you look at the recipe you'll see you can pass --without-x11 as a parameter (which should remove the need to have XQuartz installed. There is a cask for xquartz, btw. There is a recipe for R GUI, as well.

Homebrew R has had some issues with RStudio in the past and is also not recommended by the R maintainers.

hrbrmstr
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According to this commit on GitHub, it has been fixed.

r: fix build with Quartz-only cairo #2434

Now, XQuartz is not required anymore, tested and it works:

brew update
brew tap homebrew/science
brew install r
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I found that R works just fine without x.11 until I wanted to use the simple text editor. It complained about not having x.11, and wanted xquartz. I installed xquartz from home-brew and RStudio (and R) worked just fine. Hope that's useful.

Arnie
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