[R] ver 2.11.1 from xterm on Mac without lme4

[Marc Schwartz]

On Jul 14, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Andrea Foulkes wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I just installed version 2.11.1 on my Mac OS X 10.5.2. When I try running R from my xterm, I get the following error:
> 
> Error in loadNamespace(name) : there is no package called 'lme4'
> Fatal error: unable to restore saved data in .RData
> 
> I am returned to the terminal prompt and can not run R. I can open this version of R from the R console and tried installing the lme4 source package (per D. Bates' suggestion on 6-July) but get the following error:
> 
> trying URL 'http://cran.cict.fr/src/contrib/lme4_0.999375-34.tar.gz'
> Content type 'application/x-tar' length 1028012 bytes (1003 Kb)
> opened URL
> ==================================================
> downloaded 1003 Kb
> 
> * installing *source* package ‘lme4’ ...
> ** libs
> *** arch - i386
> sh: make: command not found
> ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘lme4’
> * removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.11/Resources/library/lme4’
> 
> I do not need to use lme4 (though I would like to) but I do very much prefer to work from my xterminal and apparently can not do without lme4. Any suggestions appreciated!
> 
> Andrea


You appear to have something in your default .RData file that directly or indirectly (a package dependency) requires the presence of lme4.

You can try running:

  R --vanilla

from the command line to see if this resolves the problem. 

From memory, lme4 will not pass the required CRAN checks for OSX, which means that you have to install it from source. Since you are getting an error message about 'make' not being available, this indicates that you do not have the required Apple XCode Tools installed on your system, along with other required development tools.

So your choice is to delete the offending .RData file, which will be /Users/YOUR.USER.NAME/.RData, or to install XCode Tools and the other required components to enable you to install lme4 from source code.  

If you choose the former, note that by default, files that begin with a '.' are hidden from the normal Finder views. You can modify that behavior or since you seem comfortable using xterm, using 'ls -a' will list the files in the current directory, including those that are otherwise hidden.

If you choose the latter option, XCode Tools is available (after registering) from:

  http://developer.apple.com/technologies/xcode.html

and the additional tools are available from:

  http://cran.us.r-project.org/bin/macosx/tools/

As a future reference, since this issue is specific to OSX, you would be better off posting to the R-sig-mac list:

  https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac

HTH,

Marc Schwartz