R help - Dec 2006 - Installing rgl package under Ubuntu

Dear Rexperts,

lately I'm having troubles installing the rgl package via
install.packages("rgl", dependencies=T) in the R 2.4.0 backport
running
under Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I get the following error messages, despite
having installed libx11-dev (as recommended in a similar post about SUSE
10.1):

trying URL 'http://cran.xedio.de/src/contrib/rgl_0.68.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 701566 bytes
opened URL
=================================================downloaded 685Kb

* Installing *source* package 'rgl' ...
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for X... no
configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgl'
** Removing '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rgl'

The downloaded packages are in
        /tmp/Rtmpni68vG/downloaded_packages
Warning message:
installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status in:
install.packages("rgl", dependencies = T)
+---------------------------------------+

Has anyone experienced a similar problem, and what would be the
resolution of the "X11 not found" message?

Thank you in advance!

Greets,
Ivailo

> Dear Rexperts,
> 
> lately I'm having troubles installing the rgl package via 
> install.packages("rgl", dependencies=T) in the R 2.4.0 
> backport running under Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I get the following 
> error messages, despite having installed libx11-dev (as 
> recommended in a similar post about SUSE
> 10.1):
> 
> trying URL 'http://cran.xedio.de/src/contrib/rgl_0.68.tar.gz'
> Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 701566 bytes opened 
> URL =================================================> downloaded 685Kb
> 
> * Installing *source* package 'rgl' ...
> checking for gcc... gcc
> checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out 
> checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking whether 
> we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables...
> checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we 
> are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether gcc 
> accepts -g... yes checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... 
> none needed checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E 
> checking for X... no
> configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
> ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgl'
> ** Removing '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rgl'
> 
> The downloaded packages are in
>         /tmp/Rtmpni68vG/downloaded_packages
> Warning message:
> installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status in:
> install.packages("rgl", dependencies = T)
> +---------------------------------------+
> 
> Has anyone experienced a similar problem, and what would be 
> the resolution of the "X11 not found" message?
On my ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I pass the test (tho I do get errors later during
compilation).  When checking for X, it says:
 
...
Checking for X... Libraries /usr/X11R6/lib, headers
...

I compiled R 2.4.0 from source, which also gave me some trouble when
checking for X.  I think I solved it by installing xserver-xorg-dev.
Hope this gives you some pointers


Bjorn
> 
> Thank you in advance!
> 
> Greets,
> Ivailo
> 
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On Fri, 2006-12-15 at 13:44 +0100, Van Campenhout Bjorn wrote:

[snip]
> On my ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I pass the test (tho I do get errors later during
> compilation).  When checking for X, it says:
>  
> ...
> Checking for X... Libraries /usr/X11R6/lib, headers
> ...
> 
> I compiled R 2.4.0 from source, which also gave me some trouble when
> checking for X.  I think I solved it by installing xserver-xorg-dev.
> Hope this gives you some pointers
> 
> 
> Bjorn
I installed xserver-xorg-dev, but the problem persists :(

Any other hints?

Ivailo

> On 15 December 2006 at 16:01, Ivailo Stoyanov wrote:
> | It seems that the r-base-dev package from the Ubuntu R backport
doesn't
> | provide *all* the packages necessary to build add-on libraries.
> 
> Re-read and re-think what you wrote there: you expect the r-base-dev
package
> to provide _all_ possible dependencies for _all_ possible packages. The
> Oracle of Delphi in a few lines of a meta file?
> 
> That obviously can't work.  r-base-dev tries to give you all you need
to
> compile the _most common_ packages by providing essentially what R itself
> needs.  Specialised packages that use other, more arcane libraries and
> headers such as OpenGL are obviously not included.
Dirk,

I'm obviously not that deep into the Debian/Ubuntu package management,
and these considerations of mine should be taken just as what they are
-- considerations of a puzzled R user that has some problems with
building some package;)
> Lastly, I can only urge users of Debian and Ubuntu to remember that because
> we have _native_ packages on Debian and Ubuntu, we also have _native_
> Build-Depends information.  Had you tried
> 
> 	$ sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rgl
> 
> you might have gotten to the finish line much quicker.
Thanks a lot for this hint! It is very useful and I would definitely
hit the target much easier if I knew about that. The source for the
problem at hand have to be sought back in times when I relied too much
on the native cran-r-* packages, until I found that not everything is
available natively, so I started to install only the *-base packages
and to rely on the *-dev one to provide the dependencies I need to
build needed ad-on libraries manually. Actually, until now everything
went just fine this way, and I still appreciate much such cases that
fill my (still numerous) knowledge gaps.
> Regards, Dirk
Greets,
Ivailo