Suggestion: perhaps re-arrange the OpenMP install options for macOS, putting gfortran as option 1, llvm as option 4?

[dantonnoriega]

Recommendation in the macOS install docs

Perhaps move the gfortran up to option 1, perhaps llvm towards the bottom. Or whichever compiler is often used by those who develop the package towards the top. (This would be Step 2 of the "OpenMP enabled compiler for Mac" section). That way newbs like me are more likely to end up using the compilers most used by the experts. Defaults / order matters!

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I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to compilers. Literally because the llvm option was first and appeared to work (or has historically), I tried that. Those "defaults" have stayed.

We're it not for my adventures outlined in #4899, I would not have know how much the compiler mattered. I just assumed if it successfully compiled an installed (no matter the compiler e.g. llvm vs gfortran) then things were fine.

That is not the case.

Could just be a fluke with the version of llvm I used. But woof, what a nightmare two days that was—and I almost lay the blame on data.table, my most favorite package!