Bug in qtm() causes R session to crash on macOS Sierra

[pboesu]

I was looking to try out tmap for the first time today, but the qtm() fails catastrophically, terminating the R session in the process. The error appears to be related to C++ functions from geos:

> qtm(Europe)
Assertion failed: (0), function query, file ../../../../src/geos-3.6.1/src/index/strtree/AbstractSTRtree.cpp, line 287.
Abort trap: 6 

I'm running R 3.4.0 on macOS 10.12.5 with homebrew 1.2.3
gdal (2.1.3_3), geos (3.6.1) and proj.4 (4.9.3) are all installed via homebrew.
Full session info and call sequence below.

> library(tmap)
> sessionInfo()
R version 3.4.0 (2017-04-21)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Sierra 10.12.5

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] tmap_1.10

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_0.12.11       lattice_0.20-35    deldir_0.1-14      png_0.1-7         
 [5] class_7.3-14       gtools_3.5.0       digest_0.6.12      foreach_1.4.3     
 [9] V8_1.5             mime_0.5           R6_2.2.1           plyr_1.8.4        
[13] stats4_3.4.0       coda_0.19-1        e1071_1.6-8        spdep_0.6-13      
[17] curl_2.6           geojsonlint_0.2.0  gdata_2.18.0       geosphere_1.5-5   
[21] raster_2.5-8       gmodels_2.16.2     R.utils_2.5.0      R.oo_1.21.0       
[25] Matrix_1.2-9       splines_3.4.0      webshot_0.4.1      rgdal_1.2-7       
[29] udunits2_0.13      htmlwidgets_0.8    RCurl_1.95-4.8     munsell_0.4.3     
[33] shiny_1.0.3        compiler_3.4.0     rmapshaper_0.2.0   httpuv_1.3.3      
[37] tmaptools_1.2-1    base64enc_0.1-3    rgeos_0.3-23       htmltools_0.3.6   
[41] expm_0.999-2       codetools_0.2-15   mapview_2.0.1      XML_3.98-1.9      
[45] viridisLite_0.2.0  jsonvalidate_1.0.0 sf_0.5-0           MASS_7.3-47       
[49] bitops_1.0-6       R.methodsS3_1.7.1  grid_3.4.0         nlme_3.1-131      
[53] jsonlite_1.5       satellite_0.2.0    xtable_1.8-2       DBI_0.6-1         
[57] magrittr_1.5       units_0.4-5        scales_0.4.1       KernSmooth_2.23-15
[61] LearnBayes_2.15    leaflet_1.1.0      sp_1.2-4           boot_1.3-19       
[65] osmar_1.1-7        RColorBrewer_1.1-2 iterators_1.0.8    tools_3.4.0       
[69] gdalUtils_2.0.1.7  dichromat_2.0-0    crosstalk_1.0.0    colorspace_1.3-2  
[73] classInt_0.1-24   
> data(Europe)
> qtm(Europe)
Assertion failed: (0), function query, file ../../../../src/geos-3.6.1/src/index/strtree/AbstractSTRtree.cpp, line 287.
Abort trap: 6
[at this point the R session is terminated]

[mtennekes]

This is related to rgeos. Try to run some of its examples, e.g. from the documentation of gIntersection.

[pboesu]

The rgeos examples for gIntersection work fine. Some throw errors (which is by design, I believe), others warnings, but in both cases those are handled gracefully by R.

I've also tried debugging the call to qtm(Europe), and the catastrophic error occurs only at the very end, when the plot object g is returned (https://github.com/mtennekes/tmap/blob/master/R/qtm.R#L259).
I'm not sure how to further debug the return of the plot object itself, I'm afraid.

[tim-salabim]

Recently, there were similar error messages for Mac OS reported at
r-spatial/sf#394
and
r-spatial/sf#389
maybe these help debugging the issue at hand.

[mtennekes]

See new central issue #149