[R] Problem installing packages

[Peter Dalgaard]

Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 19, 2007 at 10:51:58PM +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
>   
>> Deepankar Basu wrote:
>>     
>>> I tried to install the package "tseries" but could not do so. Any
>>> suggestions are welcome. I am using Ubuntu Linux and here is what I did:
>>>
>>> $ sudo R
>>>  
>>> Then once in R, I did
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> install.packages("tseries", dep=TRUE)
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> which gave a long list of errors. Going through them, I saw that the
>>> basic problem was that the package "grid" was not found by the packages
>>> (like "lattice", "Hmisc", etc.) that were part of the dependencies for
>>> "tseries". So, I tried installing the package "grid" but could not. Here
>>>       
>
> Maybe you don't have the header files for compiling?  In any event
> grid is only installed (see below)
>
>   
>>> is what I did (and the result):
>>>
>>> $ sudo R
>>>
>>> Once in R, I did
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> install.packages("grid", dep=TRUE)
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> And this is what I got as error message
>>>
>>> Warning in install.packages("grid", dep = TRUE) :
>>>          argument 'lib' is missing: using /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
>>> --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
>>> Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
>>> dependency '???grid???' is not available
>>>
>>> How should I proceed?
>>>   
>>>       
>> I think this is Dirk's way of shooting you in the foot... Debian/Ubuntu 
>> has a split between packages r-base and r-recommended, which is not The 
>>     
>
> Not exactly. 
>
> 'r-base' depends on r-base-core, r-recommended and many other things.
> You have the option of only installing r-base-core, but if you start
> with r-base, things just work. [1]
>
> Moreover, the r-base-core package _contains_ grid:
>
> 	 edd at basebud:~> dpkg -L r-base-core | grep grid | wc -l
> 	 197
>
>   
Yes, I goofed there. Apologies, you're not shooting users in the feet 
(not that way anyway).

However, the README for ubuntu has

sudo apt-get install r-base r-recommended

which is a bit misleading if one depends on the other.


> So to make it as plain as possible:
>
>    i)  what is in R-$VERSION/src/library/ goes into r-base-core
>    
>    ii) with the exception of R-$VERSION/src/library/Recommended
>        where each packages goes into its own r-cran-$package as
>        eg r-cran-boot, r-cran-cluster, ...
>
> In any event, r-cran-tseries has been available for years so wgar
> Deepankar wants here
>
> 	  $ sudo apt-get install r-cran-tseries
>
> Dirk
>
> [1] The most common gotcha is that people forget the other meta
> package r-base-dev that Doug created years ago -- you need it to
> ensure the appropriate -dev packages are installed too. 
>
>
>