R help - Mar 2024 - installation: while running make, unable to run pdflatex on 'NEWS.tex'

A kind member of R-core suggested this is due to a misconfiguration on 
my system, and to post it to the mailing list for troubleshooting.

When trying to build R version 4.3.3, in at least two places during the 
process it gives LaTeX errors of the form:

(example 1)

    you should 'make docs' now ...
    make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
    creating doc/NEWS
    creating doc/NEWS.pdf
    Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet     quiet, :
    unable to run pdflatex on 'NEWS.tex'
    LaTeX errors:
    ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.

    Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
    or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

    ! Emergency stop.
    <read *>

    l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
    ^^M
    ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
    Calls: <Anonymous> -> texi2pdf -> texi2dvi
    Execution halted
    make[1]: /*/ [Makefile:74: NEWS.pdf] Error 1
    make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
    make: [Makefile:73: docs] Error 2 (ignored)

(example 2)

    make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
    building/updating vignettes for package 'grid' ...
    building/updating vignettes for package 'parallel' ...
    building/updating vignettes for package 'utils' ...
    building/updating vignettes for package 'stats' ...
    processing 'reshape.Rnw'
    Error: compiling TeX file 'reshape.tex' failed with message:
    unable to run pdflatex on 'reshape.tex'
    LaTeX errors:
    ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.

    Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
    or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

    ! Emergency stop.
    <read *>

    l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
    ^^M
    ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
    Execution halted
    make[1]: ** [Makefile:103: vignettes] Error 1
    make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
    make: ** [Makefile:81: vignettes] Error 2

here is my |pdflatex --version| info:

    pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2022/dev/Debian)
    kpathsea version 6.3.4/dev
    Compiled with libpng 1.6.37; using libpng 1.6.37
    Compiled with zlib 1.2.11; using zlib 1.2.11
    Compiled with xpdf version 4.03

my platform info:

    Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
    Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

I installed from this file with corresponding md5sum

    R-4.3.3.tar.xz 5602f5996107c346dba12a16e866d2e2

The specific commands I ran which led to the error were:

    wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.3.3.tar.xz
    mkdir R433
    tar xJf R-4.3.3.tar.xz
    cd R-4.3.3
    ./configure --prefix=/home/btyner/R433
    make

Happy to provide any additional information needed.

This really is all LaTeX errors, not R errors. Both examples complain that
pdftexcmds.sty is not installed. Most "sty" files are in LaTeX
packages. Each LaTeX distribution has its own way to install packages ... but
the difficulty is usually on the same order of difficulty as installing R
packages from CRAN... that is, pretty easy. But you need to read about _your_
TeX system for details. I use Google to figure out which package has the given
file in it... it is usually the same as whatever comes before ".sty",
but not always.

On March 1, 2024 7:46:53 AM PST, Benjamin Tyner <btyner at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>A kind member of R-core suggested this is due to a misconfiguration on my
system, and to post it to the mailing list for troubleshooting.
>
>When trying to build R version 4.3.3, in at least two places during the
process it gives LaTeX errors of the form:
>
>(example 1)
>
>   you should 'make docs' now ...
>   make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
>   creating doc/NEWS
>   creating doc/NEWS.pdf
>   Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet >  
quiet, :
>   unable to run pdflatex on 'NEWS.tex'
>   LaTeX errors:
>   ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.
>
>   Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
>   or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
>
>   ! Emergency stop.
>   <read *>
>
>   l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
>   ^^M
>   ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
>   Calls: <Anonymous> -> texi2pdf -> texi2dvi
>   Execution halted
>   make[1]: /*/ [Makefile:74: NEWS.pdf] Error 1
>   make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
>   make: [Makefile:73: docs] Error 2 (ignored)
>
>(example 2)
>
>   make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
>   building/updating vignettes for package 'grid' ...
>   building/updating vignettes for package 'parallel' ...
>   building/updating vignettes for package 'utils' ...
>   building/updating vignettes for package 'stats' ...
>   processing 'reshape.Rnw'
>   Error: compiling TeX file 'reshape.tex' failed with message:
>   unable to run pdflatex on 'reshape.tex'
>   LaTeX errors:
>   ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.
>
>   Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
>   or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
>
>   ! Emergency stop.
>   <read *>
>
>   l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
>   ^^M
>   ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
>   Execution halted
>   make[1]: ** [Makefile:103: vignettes] Error 1
>   make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
>   make: ** [Makefile:81: vignettes] Error 2
>
>here is my |pdflatex --version| info:
>
>   pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2022/dev/Debian)
>   kpathsea version 6.3.4/dev
>   Compiled with libpng 1.6.37; using libpng 1.6.37
>   Compiled with zlib 1.2.11; using zlib 1.2.11
>   Compiled with xpdf version 4.03
>
>my platform info:
>
>   Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>   Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
>
>I installed from this file with corresponding md5sum
>
>   R-4.3.3.tar.xz 5602f5996107c346dba12a16e866d2e2
>
>The specific commands I ran which led to the error were:
>
>   wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.3.3.tar.xz
>   mkdir R433
>   tar xJf R-4.3.3.tar.xz
>   cd R-4.3.3
>   ./configure --prefix=/home/btyner/R433
>   make
>
>Happy to provide any additional information needed.
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

? Fri, 1 Mar 2024 10:46:53 -0500
Benjamin Tyner <btyner at gmail.com> ?????:
> my platform info:
> 
>     Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>     Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
Quick things first: have you installed all the build-dependencies? apt
build-dep r-base (maybe with --install-suggests? haven't tried that in
a while) should do that. In particular, the build dependencies include
texlive-fonts-extra and texlive-latex-extra. That's a lot of packages,
but some of them are required to compile LaTeX documents produced by R.
>     you should 'make docs' now ...
>     make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
>     creating doc/NEWS
>     creating doc/NEWS.pdf
>     Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet >   
quiet, :
>     unable to run pdflatex on 'NEWS.tex'
>     LaTeX errors:
>     ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.
Can you compile a minimal LaTeX document? Something like:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\[ \mathbf{y} = \mathbf{X} \beta \]
\end{document}

Does tools::texi2pdf('THISFILE.tex') fail with a similar error message?

-- 
Best regards,
Ivan

On my system, pdftexcmds.sty can be found in
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/generic/pdftexcmds/pdftexcmds.sty
A quick poking around with 'apt' and 'dpkg-query -L' told me
that this
comes from the
texlive-latex-recommended
Ubuntu package.  So on my system, if I didn't already have this,
sudo apt install texlive-latex-recommended
should fix the problem.

On Sat, 2 Mar 2024 at 04:47, Benjamin Tyner <btyner at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> A kind member of R-core suggested this is due to a misconfiguration on
> my system, and to post it to the mailing list for troubleshooting.
>
> When trying to build R version 4.3.3, in at least two places during the
> process it gives LaTeX errors of the form:
>
> (example 1)
>
>     you should 'make docs' now ...
>     make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
>     creating doc/NEWS
>     creating doc/NEWS.pdf
>     Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet >   
quiet, :
>     unable to run pdflatex on 'NEWS.tex'
>     LaTeX errors:
>     ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.
>
>     Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
>     or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
>
>     ! Emergency stop.
>     <read *>
>
>     l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
>     ^^M
>     ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
>     Calls: <Anonymous> -> texi2pdf -> texi2dvi
>     Execution halted
>     make[1]: /*/ [Makefile:74: NEWS.pdf] Error 1
>     make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/doc'
>     make: [Makefile:73: docs] Error 2 (ignored)
>
> (example 2)
>
>     make[1]: Entering directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
>     building/updating vignettes for package 'grid' ...
>     building/updating vignettes for package 'parallel' ...
>     building/updating vignettes for package 'utils' ...
>     building/updating vignettes for package 'stats' ...
>     processing 'reshape.Rnw'
>     Error: compiling TeX file 'reshape.tex' failed with message:
>     unable to run pdflatex on 'reshape.tex'
>     LaTeX errors:
>     ! LaTeX Error: File `pdftexcmds.sty' not found.
>
>     Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
>     or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)
>
>     ! Emergency stop.
>     <read *>
>
>     l.108 RequirePackage{pdftexcmds}[2018/09/10]
>     ^^M
>     ! ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!
>     Execution halted
>     make[1]: ** [Makefile:103: vignettes] Error 1
>     make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/btyner/R-4.3.3/src/library'
>     make: ** [Makefile:81: vignettes] Error 2
>
> here is my |pdflatex --version| info:
>
>     pdfTeX 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2022/dev/Debian)
>     kpathsea version 6.3.4/dev
>     Compiled with libpng 1.6.37; using libpng 1.6.37
>     Compiled with zlib 1.2.11; using zlib 1.2.11
>     Compiled with xpdf version 4.03
>
> my platform info:
>
>     Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
>     Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS
>
> I installed from this file with corresponding md5sum
>
>     R-4.3.3.tar.xz 5602f5996107c346dba12a16e866d2e2
>
> The specific commands I ran which led to the error were:
>
>     wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.3.3.tar.xz
>     mkdir R433
>     tar xJf R-4.3.3.tar.xz
>     cd R-4.3.3
>     ./configure --prefix=/home/btyner/R433
>     make
>
> Happy to provide any additional information needed.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.