[R] Problem installing gnomeGUI in Ubuntu: "HAVE_ORBIT" was never defined

[fsando]

I am trying to install the gnomeGUI package
I have tried from within R (R was started with: sudo R) with:
install.package()
and from console with:
sudo R CMD INSTALL /download/gnomeGUI_2.3.0-3.tar.gz
In both cases I get the exact same errors:

checking for gnome-config... no
checking for gnomeConf.sh file in /usr/local/lib... not found
configure: error: conditional "HAVE_ORBIT" was never defined.
Usually this means the macro was only invoked conditionally.
ERROR: configuration failed for package 'gnomeGUI'

Found the following in earlier message in R-help list:

 From B R Tura
"So I think gnomeGUI not instalable in R now..."

Response from Prof Ripley:
"This is almost entirely misinformation. gnomeGUI is a package on CRAN 
(and has been for a couple of years), and can be installed just like any
other package. Like several others, it requires R to have been 
configured with --enable-R-shlib."

Any help would be much appreciated.