Many of the libraries that are packaged by the various Linux
distributions come in two forms:
1) The basic library, which can be used by any program that
has been built to access the library, and
2) development versions (ending in -dev on Debian based systems,
and -devel on Red Hat based systems) which are required for compiling
any programs that need to access the library.
Often, all that's missing from an installation is one or two header (.h)
files, which is one of the things that the development packages provide.
Some of the more popular libraries, also include a "-config" command,
that allows other programs to know the appropriate flags to use when
creating programs that will access the libraries. These commands are
also part of the development package.
So, for example, on a system with curl installed, but libcurl-openssl-dev
or libcurl4-openssl-dev not installed, curl itself will work fine, and even
some other programs that use curl will work, but you won't be able to compile
any program that needs to use the curl library.
It seems to me that many Linux users encounter this for the first time when
they build a library from source. Using apt-get search with the appropriate
terms will usually point you to the right package that's missing, for
example "apt-cache search curl dev" or "apt-cache search xml dev". There will
usually be lots of packages listed, but piping the results into a search
for Development will often narrow things down. For example, the curl and
xml development packages can be found like this:
$ apt-cache search curl dev | grep Development
libcurl4-gnutls-dev - Development files and documentation for libcurl (GnuTLS)
libcurl4-openssl-dev - Development files and documentation for libcurl (OpenSSL)
libcurl-ocaml-dev - OCaml libcurl bindings (Development package)
$ apt-cache search xml dev | grep Development
libapiextractor-dev - Development files for the library headers parser
libgdome2-dev - Development files for libgdome2
libmagics++-dev - Development files for ECMWF plotting software MAGICS++
libpoco-dev - Development files for POCO - The C++ Portable Components
libxmlrpc-epi-dev - Development files for libxmlrpc-epi0, a XML-RPC request library
libxmlsec1-dev - Development files for the XML security library
monodevelop - Development Environment for GNOME
libaprutil1-dev - The Apache Portable Runtime Utility Library - Development Headers
libsoup2.4-dev - an HTTP library implementation in C -- Development files
libwebkit-dev - Web content engine library for Gtk+ - Development files
libxml2-dev - Development files for the GNOME XML library
Interestingly, for xml, it's last one listed.
- Phil Spector
Statistical Computing Facility
Department of Statistics
UC Berkeley
spector at stat.berkeley.edu
On Mon, 25 Apr 2011, Ben Tupper wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Apr 25, 2011, at 6:38 PM, Abraham Mathew wrote:
>
>> This is kind of a second question (yeah, I know), but I also get a similar
>> error when I try to install the RCurl package
>>
>> * installing *source* package ?RCurl? ...
>> checking for curl-config... no
>> Cannot find curl-config
>> ERROR: configuration failed for package ?RCurl?
>> * removing ?/home/abraham/R/i686-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13/RCurl?
>>
>> The downloaded packages are in
>> ?/tmp/RtmpNmbI03/downloaded_packages?
>> Warning message:
>> In install.packages() :
>> installation of package 'RCurl' had non-zero exit status
>>
>>
>
> I just went through a similar experience on CentOS. My Linux skills are a
> bit wobbly, but I learned watching my local IT whiz get me straightened out.
> Have you tried testing the curl companion command, curl-config, to see what
> you have installed? For example...
>
> $ curl-config --version
> libcurl 7.19.7
>
> If that doesn't work then it seems to me that you either don't have curl
> installed or if you do it isn't on your search path.
>
> Cheers,
> Ben
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> I never had any problems with installing packages. However, I recently
>> removed my windows
>> partition and things all weird now.
>>
>>
>> Thanks again.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Phil Spector
>> <spector at stat.berkeley.edu>wrote:
>>
>>> Abraham -
>>>
>>> sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
>>>
>>> is what you need to get the development libraries and xml2-config
>>> installed
>>> on your Ubuntu machine.
>>>
>>> - Phil
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, 25 Apr 2011, Abraham Mathew wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello folks,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here's is info on what system I'm working on.
>>>>
>>>>> sessionInfo()
>>>>>
>>>> R version 2.13.0 (2011-04-13)
>>>> Platform: i686-pc-linux-gnu (32-bit)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm trying to install the XML package. However, I end up with the
>>>> following
>>>> error message.
>>>>
>>>> install.packages("XML")
>>>>>
>>>> ....
>>>> checking for xml2-config... no
>>>> Cannot find xml2-config
>>>> ERROR: configuration failed for package ?XML?
>>>> * removing ?/home/abraham/R/i686-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13/XML?
>>>>
>>>> The downloaded packages are in
>>>> ?/tmp/RtmpUsckPl/downloaded_packages?
>>>> Warning message:
>>>> In install.packages() :
>>>> installation of package 'XML' had non-zero exit status
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> When I run library(XML), I get that there is no package named XML.
>>>>
>>>> Can anyone help diagnose the problem.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thank You,
>>>> Abraham
>>>>
>>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
> Ben Tupper
> Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
> 180 McKown Point Rd. P.O. Box 475
> West Boothbay Harbor, Maine 04575-0475
> http://www.bigelow.org/
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.