[R] Where is the tcltk package?

[Erik Iverson]

On 04/07/2011 07:55 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
> On 08/04/11 12:40, Erik Iverson wrote:
>> On 04/07/2011 07:32 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
>>> On 08/04/11 12:22, Erik Iverson wrote:
>>>> Rolf,
>>>>
>>>> What does
>>>>
>>>>> capabilities("tcltk")
>>>> return?
>>> FALSE
>> I believe R needs to be compiled with tcltk support for the package to work. Do
>> you compile your own version or use a package manager (e.g., on Ubuntu)? If you
>> have TCL/TK installed in a "standard" location, all should be well I think.
>
> I installed R from source; couldn't figure out how to get a Ubuntu binary.
> I forget the details (it was a while ago) but nothing seemed to work.
>
> I think I have the tcl/tk stuff in a ``standard location'':
<snip>

>> On my Ubuntu machine, I have both the "tcl" and the "tk" packages installed
>> through Synaptic (the package manager).
> I don't grok ``Synaptic''. I have installed various stuff using
> ``sudo apt-get install ....'' --- that's about as far as my capabilities extend.

Synaptic is just a front end to "sudo apt-get" type installs, so same thing. You 
probably need the tcl-dev and tk-dev (or similarly named) for your version of 
tcltk to compile.  Those contain the development headers needed to compile 
programs against the tcltk library.  You can look in the config.log file created 
by the R "configure" process and grep for "tcl" to see what might have gone 
wrong, but my guess is tcl.h or something like that couldn't be found.

So once you install those dev packages, you could rebuild R and check that tcltk 
will work, the results of "configure" should tell you that before you even compile.

Or just install the Ubuntu packages per:

http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/

assuming that's your distro.

HTH,
erik