Update on R/RStudio support for Apple Silicon Macs?

tony1 · February 9, 2021, 12:04pm

Hi All,

I recently bought an MacBook Pro with an Apple Silicon processor to do some work on COVID analytics. I've been using the EpiNow2 package to calculate the transmission rate (Rt) for COVID. This package uses the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to estimate Rt, which is highly processor intensive.

I was surprised to find that it runs more slowly on my new Macbook than it does on my 2019 27" iMac. The iMac does have more RAM--40GB--than my Macbook which has 16GB, but the data file being analysed has fewer than 300 rows of input data.

My guess is that this is in part because R is running through Rosetta 2. I saw a blog by Tomas Kalibera and Simon Urbanek published in November about this, and wanted to see if there might be any updates?

https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/2020/11/02/will-r-work-on-apple-silicon/index.html

It looks like work is underway on making a version of R itself for Apple Silicon which is good news!

Thanks in advance for any updates anyone might have!

jonathan · February 10, 2021, 5:32am

If you're willing to use nightly builds, there is indeed a version of R built for Apple M1 chips now. You can get it here:

However, please note that it does not work with RStudio, which does not have an Apple Silicon build yet. Track this issue for progress reports:

github.com/rstudio/rstudio

Add native support for Apple's ARM chips (arm64, M1) to RStudio for macOS

opened 08:42PM - 21 Dec 20 UTC

closed 03:48PM - 29 Mar 22 UTC

jmcphers

enhancement macos

R and RStudio work today on the M1 chip, albeit with compromised performance, vi…a [Rosetta2](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/about_the_rosetta_translation_environment), an emulation layer. This issue tracks the work needed to add native support for Apple's new ARM-based silicon to RStudio. - We should do this as a [universal binary](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/building_a_universal_macos_binary), supporting x86_64 and arm64 without requiring a separate download. Thankfully it is possible to build arm64 binaries on x86_64 hardware. The only downside of this approach is that it will make the binary enormous (as we will ultimately ship x86_64 and arm64 versions of Chromium). - Our build infrastructure will need to be updated to the latest version of Xcode to get support for cross-compiling to arm64. - Because we load R as a library, we need to wait for R itself to be ported to Apple silicon before RStudio can be fully ported. This is in the works, but currently held up due to dependencies on tooling further upstream. See [Will R Work on Apple Silicon?](https://developer.r-project.org/Blog/public/2020/11/02/will-r-work-on-apple-silicon/) from the R Core team. (Update: It works now. https://mac.r-project.org/) - On the front end, we depend on QtWebEngine, which also does not build for M1 (see [QT-85279](https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85279)). This should not be an issue since we hope to move to Electron (https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/issues/7389), which [supports M1 as of the 11.0 release](https://www.electronjs.org/blog/apple-silicon). - Several binaries we bundle will have to continue to run under Rosetta2 since they don't have M1 ports available and won't for the foreseeable future. See e.g., https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/6960 Other useful links - @hrbrmstr's field report: https://rud.is/b/2020/11/18/apple-silicon-big-sur-rstudio-r-field-report/ - Benchmarking performance of R/RStudio under Rosetta2: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/data-science-r-and-spss-26-etc-under-rosetta-2-apple-silicon-m1.2269302/?post=29326680#post-29326680 - Does It Arm: RStudio: https://doesitarm.com/app/rstudio/ - r-devel (R 4.1) macOS builds with native ARM binaries: https://mac.r-project.org/

tony1 · February 10, 2021, 9:47am

That is fantastic news--thank you!

I'd love to try out the development version of R--is it possible to set it up as a separate instance to my 'normal' R that I use with RStudio?

tony1 · February 23, 2021, 11:58am

Hi, I've tried to download the latest arm build of R and that worked using tar as indicated on the page. Unfortunately, the link to the GUI from the R for macOS Developers page didn't work (invalid link):
https://mac.r-project.org/www/R-mac-dev/el-capitan/R-3.6-branch/R-GUI-7939-3.6-el-capitan-Release.dmg

I tried to use my existing R GUI console--using the RSwitch app to confirm that the library is pointing to the development arm64 version--and it crashes when it tries to open.

I can access the arm64 version of R using the command line in Terminal, however.

Is this a known issue (given that this is a development build), or should the R GUI work?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you might have!

Tony

jonathan · March 4, 2021, 9:01pm

Update: We now have support for Apple Silicon (aarch64) versions of R in the RStudio daily builds. If you have one of the new M1 machines, we'd love to get your feedback on it.

tony1 · March 4, 2021, 11:09pm

Hi Jonathan. I tried installing the new RStudio but R crashed upon loading. I used RSwitch to go between my stable version (v4.0.3) and my development version of R (v4.1.0). This is the same approach I take with the stable version of RStudio (which runs R v4.0.3, but clearly not v4.1-arm64--though the latest dev version of R GUI does).

When I select R v4.0.3 in RSwitch:

Process Output: The R session process exited with code 1. (No errors or output appear)

04 Mar 2021 22:17:34 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200
04 Mar 2021 22:18:45 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200
04 Mar 2021 22:58:27 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200

When I choose R v4.1-arm64 (v4.1.0), I get the following messages:

The R session process exited with code 6 .

ERRORS

dyld: could not load inserted library '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib' because no suitable image found. Did find: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: stat() failed with errno=1

04 Mar 2021 22:17:34 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200
04 Mar 2021 22:18:45 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200
04 Mar 2021 22:58:27 [rsession-me] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200

I installed this by dragging the RStudio file into my Applications folder. Was this the right approach, or was there something elseI was supposed to do? (If so, could you point me toward a guide that I can follow?).

Thanks again for putting this version together! I look forward to trying it soon!

jonathan · March 5, 2021, 12:30am

Thank for the error, that's very helpful! Can you share the output of these two commands on your system (run in Terminal)?

/usr/bin/uname -m

/usr/bin/lipo -archs /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib

rafrob · March 5, 2021, 8:47pm

I tried to test the new daily build and had a failure to start. This occurred with the most recent beta version of R for apple silicon.
The R session failed to start.

ERROR MESSAGE

[No error available]

PROCESS OUTPUT

The R session process exited with code 1 .

ERRORS

[No errors emitted]

OUTPUT

[No output emitted]``Preformatted text

05 Mar 2021 20:44:00 [rsession-raf] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200

dumplingsensei · March 6, 2021, 6:52am

Hi there,
I hope this feedback will help!

R version: R-devel, 4.1.0
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20.0 (64-bit)

Error Starting R

The R session failed to start.

ERROR MESSAGE

[No error available]

PROCESS OUTPUT

The R session process exited with code 6 .

ERRORS

dyld: could not load inserted library '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib' because no suitable image found. Did find: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: stat() failed with errno=1

OUTPUT

[No output emitted]

RECENT LOG

Log File [No logs available]

NEXT STEPS

R can fail to start up for many reasons. The following may help you resolve the problem:

Investigate any errors above.
Make sure that R starts up correctly outside RStudio (using RGui, R.app, or R in a terminal).
Fully uninstall all versions of R from your machine, and reinstall the version you wish to use with RStudio.
Remove startup customizations such as an .Rprofile file, if present.

Further troubleshooting help can be found on our website:

Troubleshooting RStudio Startup

Thank you!

hugh_is_this · March 7, 2021, 12:36am

I'm also having the same issue where attempting to start RStudio with R 4.1.0 for arm64 on my M1 Mac gives the error:

The R session process exited with code **6** .

### ERRORS

`dyld: could not load inserted library '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib' because no suitable image found. Did find:
/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture
/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib/libR.dylib: stat() failed with errno=1`

Running the terminal commands outputs arm64 for both of them. Hope that helps!

jonathan · March 8, 2021, 6:20pm

This RStudio issue tracks the Exec format error error; follow it for updates:

github.com/rstudio/rstudio

RStudio fails to launch on Big Sur 11.2.2

opened 03:45PM - 08 Mar 21 UTC

closed 10:31PM - 24 Mar 21 UTC

gadenbuie

bug reproducible macos

### System details RStudio Edition : Desktop RStudio Version : 1.4.1…603-1 (Pro) and 1.4.1620 (Open Source) OS Version : MacOS 11.2.2 (20D80) R Version : 3.6.3, 4.0.2, 4.0.4 ### Steps to reproduce the problem Opening RStudio Pro fails to launch with "Error Starting R" messaage. ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5420529/110343273-56381680-7ffa-11eb-9848-2b5ae1488e16.png) ``` 08 Mar 2021 15:35:57 [rsession-garrick] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200 08 Mar 2021 15:40:40 [rsession-garrick] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200 08 Mar 2021 15:43:02 [rsession-garrick] ERROR generic error 8 (Exec format error) [r-home: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources, r-archs: , rsession-archs: ]; OCCURRED AT rstudio::core::Error rstudio::r::session::(anonymous namespace)::validateCompatible(const std::string &) src/cpp/r/session/RSession.cpp:270; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) src/cpp/session/SessionMain.cpp:2200 ``` ### Describe the problem in detail I just updated Big Sur to 11.2.2 (from a previous version of Big Sur). RStudio Desktop Pro 1.4.1603-1606 all fail to launch. The earliest failing version is 1.4.1603-1 (`b843b8d65fd6e6f3821c0dadbf63aeab-19`). The latest version of RStudio Desktop Pro that works for me is 1.4.1598-2 (build id `859cdc242160a8f6298aa11e96644e01-19`). I also checked the latest Open Source version an 1.4.1620 fails with the same message. I didn't work through past versions, though. I tried creating a diagnostics report but because RStudio fails to launch, the report is not created. I reinstalled both R 3.6.3 and R 4.0.4, but I see the same issue with both versions. - [x] I have read the guide for [submitting good bug reports](https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio/wiki/Writing-Good-Bug-Reports). - [x] I have installed the latest version of RStudio, and confirmed that the issue still persists. - [ ] If I am reporting a RStudio crash, I have included a [diagnostics report](https://support.rstudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/200321257-Running-a-Diagnostics-Report). (Not possible.) - [x] I have done my best to include a minimal, self-contained set of instructions for consistently reproducing the issue.

ocram · March 9, 2021, 6:28pm

Hi, I'm not able to install RStudio on a Rosetta-free MacBook Air M1. Your installer has only the x86_64 version:

% lipo -archs /Volumes/RStudio-1.4.1623/RStudio.app/Contents/MacOS/RStudio
x86_64

do you have any clue ? Thanks

jonathan · March 9, 2021, 7:22pm

You can now run the aarch64 version of R inside RStudio, but you currently still need Rosetta to run the UI and the rest of the IDE (helper tools, etc.)

ocram · March 9, 2021, 8:10pm

Ok, thank you for the answer. Will be available a universal binary version in the next months?

jonathan · March 9, 2021, 9:02pm

No date yet, probably towards the end of the year. RStudio's UI needs to get moved over to a framework that supports aarch64 first, and that's a pretty big project.

hugh_is_this · March 28, 2021, 10:21pm

Following up on this, I'm not sure that these errors have the same solutions? Their error has a code of 1 and mine has a code of 6. Additionally, I've uninstalled and reinstalled XCode, R, and RStudio and still get the same error and have updated to Big Sur 11.2.3

system · April 18, 2021, 10:21pm

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