[R] a problem loading package 'subselect'

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Rajarshi Guha wrote:

> Hi,
>   I downloaded the subselect package from CRAN and installed it in the
> system wide R library path. During installation the package compiled the
> fortran sources with no errors. 

No _reported_ errors.

> However, when loading the library gives me an error:
> 
> > library(subselect)
> Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) :
>         unable to load shared library
> "/usr/lib/R/library/subselect/libs/subselect.so":
>   /usr/lib/R/library/subselect/libs/subselect.so: undefined symbol:
> f_iob
> Error in library(subselect) : .First.lib failed
> 
> I would had expected that if it could'nt find a symbol, that would have
> shown up during compilation. But there were no compile time errors. I

All you did was create a shared object.  It does not need to be complete.

> also tried R CMD check on the package directory and compilation occurs
> with no errors but I get the errors below:
> 
> * checking S3 generic/method consistency ... WARNING
> Error in .tryQuietly({ : Error in library(package, lib.loc = lib.loc,
> character.only = TRUE, verbose = FALSE) :
>         .First.lib failed
> Execution halted
> 
> (And more such errors)
> 
> I have contacted the author of the package and he sent me few postings
> regarding the f_iob symbol and it appears to be a problem resulting from
> a LAPACK compiled with the Intel fortran compiler (ifc). However in this
> case, ifc is not installed on my system and during compilation it uses
> the Rlapack library.

The problem is to do with a Fortran run-time, and AFAICS not that in gcc 
3.3.2.

> I installed R from rpm's and am running on Fedora Core 1.

...

> It appears I am missing some library that contains f_iob (though why the
> error did'nt show up at compile time I dont know).

As I said above ....

> Has anybody faced this problem or have any suggestions as to how to fix
> it?

Compile R from the sources: works for me on FC1.  My subselect.so does not 
have a reference to f_iob.

Or look with nm to see which of the components which made up subselect.so
contains the reference, and check its compilation line.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595