[R] Problem installing packages

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2007 at 10:51:58PM +0200, Peter Dalgaard wrote:
> Deepankar Basu wrote:
> > I tried to install the package "tseries" but could not do so. Any
> > suggestions are welcome. I am using Ubuntu Linux and here is what I did:
> >
> > $ sudo R
> >  
> > Then once in R, I did
> >
> >   
> >> install.packages("tseries", dep=TRUE)
> >>     
> >
> > which gave a long list of errors. Going through them, I saw that the
> > basic problem was that the package "grid" was not found by the packages
> > (like "lattice", "Hmisc", etc.) that were part of the dependencies for
> > "tseries". So, I tried installing the package "grid" but could not. Here

Maybe you don't have the header files for compiling?  In any event
grid is only installed (see below)

> > is what I did (and the result):
> >
> > $ sudo R
> >
> > Once in R, I did
> >
> >   
> >> install.packages("grid", dep=TRUE)
> >>     
> >
> > And this is what I got as error message
> >
> > Warning in install.packages("grid", dep = TRUE) :
> >          argument 'lib' is missing: using /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
> > --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
> > Loading Tcl/Tk interface ... done
> > dependency '???grid???' is not available
> >
> > How should I proceed?
> >   
> I think this is Dirk's way of shooting you in the foot... Debian/Ubuntu 
> has a split between packages r-base and r-recommended, which is not The 

Not exactly. 

'r-base' depends on r-base-core, r-recommended and many other things.
You have the option of only installing r-base-core, but if you start
with r-base, things just work. [1]

Moreover, the r-base-core package _contains_ grid:

	 edd at basebud:~> dpkg -L r-base-core | grep grid | wc -l
	 197

So to make it as plain as possible:

   i)  what is in R-$VERSION/src/library/ goes into r-base-core
   
   ii) with the exception of R-$VERSION/src/library/Recommended
       where each packages goes into its own r-cran-$package as
       eg r-cran-boot, r-cran-cluster, ...

In any event, r-cran-tseries has been available for years so wgar
Deepankar wants here

	  $ sudo apt-get install r-cran-tseries

Dirk

[1] The most common gotcha is that people forget the other meta
package r-base-dev that Doug created years ago -- you need it to
ensure the appropriate -dev packages are installed too. 


-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison