[Rd] Linux installation

[Gavin Simpson]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 09:20 +0100, Sklyar, Oleg (MI London) wrote:
> Michael:
> 
> 1) this IS a wrong list for such questions. You mention r-help, but this
> is Rd (developers) and your question is completely unrelated to the
> topics of the list!

Oleg, the gist of Michael's email was to make a suggestion about an
addition to the R FAQ or installation instructions for R. I don't think
that is inappropriate for this list.

I had already provided Micheal with the solution to his original problem
posted on R-Help. In off-list emails I suggested that Michael provide
his feedback to this list and the R Core Team as he had found it
difficult to understand his error and wanted to contribute a suggestion
for improvement. Apologies to the list if my suggestion was in error.

In doing so, however, Michael (and I indirectly) was directed to where
this *is* documented in the R Admin and Installation manual by Marc
Schwartz - so, as so often the case, R Core had already thought of and
implemented Michael's suggestion.

> 2) In Linux, any time you want to compile anything against anything and
> using binary distributions you need *-devel or *-dev packages depending
> on the distribution. Even if it is not mentioned anywhere, it is
> actually how all Linux binary distributions are maintained. What those
> *-devel contain are actually *.h files.

I made the same point in my response to Michael's OP. In our discussion
though I realised that for someone new to R and not familiar with how it
works, it is not immediately clear that you are compiling /against/ R
when /installing/ a package from within R itself. If the instructions
for installing tseries had been, open console, configure, make, install,
then fair enough, we might expect anyone using Linux to realise what was
wrong, but you don't install R packages that way.

With more and more people moving to Linux for various reasons, the
default attitude can't be to assume that if you're a Linux user that you
automatically know how all of this works.

All the best,

G

> 3) Install R from source and you will have no issues.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dr Oleg Sklyar
> Technology Group
> Man Investments Ltd
> +44 (0)20 7144 3803
> osklyar at maninvestments.com 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org 
> > [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Michael 
> > Steinbeck-Reeves
> > Sent: 08 May 2008 16:39
> > To: r-devel at r-project.org
> > Subject: [Rd] Linux installation
> > 
> > I have just installed R under Linux and had a tricky time 
> > finding out that I needed to install r-devel as it was not 
> > suggested by yum and does not appear in any of the FAQs. 
> > Everything was fine until I tried to install tseries then I 
> > was told in the compiler output that R.h was missing. 
> > Obviously a search on Google proved fruitless and I was 
> > forced to ask on r-help. I am now kicking myself, of course, 
> > but wouldn't it be a useful addition to the R installation 
> > FAQs, especially for those not acquainted with the C compiler output?
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Michael
> > --
> > ------------------------
> > Michael Steinbeck-Reeves
> > 
> > www.steinbeck-reeves.co.uk
> > 
> > Work   +44(0)1256 886190
> > Mobile +44(0)7785 277413
> > 
> > Milton House
> > Stratfield Saye
> > Berkshire
> > RG7 2BT
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> > 
> 
> 
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