R-beta: linux: problem installing R-base-0.50.a4-1.i386.rpm

[Martyn Plummer]

At 20:31 03/10/97, p.baker at fsc.qut.edu.au wrote:

>I just installed R-base-0.50.a4-1.i386.rpm for redhat linux but am missing
>a library file. rpm complained and so does R. When I try to run R I get
>
>/usr/lib/R/bin/R.binary: can't load library 'libf2c.so.0'
>
>What else do I need to install - i have g77 0.5.20 which works fine but
>not f2c as I was advised against installing f2c because of possible
>conflicts. If I need it what version do I need? 
>
>Thanks a lot
>Peter Baker

I have created a new rpm which is statically linked against libf2c and
so doesn't require you to have the shared library installed. It's
called R-base-0.50.a4-2.i386.rpm. You should be able to download it from
a CRAN mirror in a day or two. There is a bug in RedHat Linux 4.0 which
means that even if you have installed the shared f2c libraries (in package
f2c-libs) the file libf2c.so.0 is not created and you get the same error
message. So unless you already know how to get round this problem (not hard,
but tedious, and common on RedHat) use the new version.

When you build R on Linux, the configure script automatically adds f2c to
the list of libraries. This means you must have the static or shared
f2c libraries installed to build R. But I'm wondering why it needs to be
linked to f2c at all. R is not supposed to require a Fortran compiler and,
indeed, it builds quite happily if you  edit the configure script and remove
the line that adds -lf2c to the list of libraries. Moreover the
statically linked version of R.binary is, in fact, smaller that the
dynamically
linked version, which suggests to me that it hasn't taken anything from
libf2c.a, but perhaps I'm being naive here.

Is this a hangover from the time when a Fortran compiler was needed to
build R?

Martyn

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