R freezes when installing packages from package installer on Macbook

Question

I have been attempting to install some bioconductor packages in R on my Mac. However, when using the package installer, the application freezes and fails to respond. The same thing does NOT happen when I use the command line installer within R-the installer downloads and runs the package pretty much instantly.

Any ideas what's going on?

Thanks, David

Answer 1

The Mac GUI doesn't provide any feedback until all packages have been successfully installed. Therefore it may appear to "freeze" while it is actually just waiting for the package installation process (download + install) to finish.

Note that BioC download is often very slow (and the packages can be big), so that's one of the main reasons why people tend to report this only with BioC.