[R] how can I install the latest version of r in linux?

[Marc Schwartz]

On Oct 25, 2011, at 12:38 AM, Jie TANG wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jie TANG <totangjie at gmail.com>
> Date: 2011/10/25
> Subject: how can I install the latest version of r in linux?
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> 
> 
> HI R-users
>  I downloaded the latest version of R with the name R-latest.tar.gz from
> the website
> But when I tar the package and configure the package,
> some error message showed that
> configure: error: --with-readline=yes (default) and headers/libs are not
> available
> 
> and  I run make command:
> error message says;
> user at gateway R-2.13.2]$ make
> make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.
> 
> and when I download the RPM package for redhat, there are still some errors
> rpm -ivh R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386.rpm
> warning: R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key
> ID 97d3544e
> error: Failed dependencies:
> libXmu.so.6 is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> libgfortran.so.1 is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> libtcl8.4.so is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> libtk8.4.so is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> perl(File::Copy::Recursive) is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> tetex-latex is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> xdg-utils is needed by R-core-2.10.0-2.el5.i386
> How could I install the R package or is there any binary version of R so
> that I can tar the
> compressed package and use R directly?
> thank you .

If you want to compile from source, you should review the R Installation and Administration manual:

  http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html

You appear to be missing required header files (.H files) for readline, which are typically available in a readline-devel-* RPM. This is covered in the manual.

The additional errors when you attempt to install the RPM indicate you are missing other dependencies as well, not to mention you are attempting to install an out of date version of R.

If you want to install from a precompiled RPM and you are running RHEL, you should use the 'yum' package manager, which makes it easy to install RPMs and satisfy dependencies. For RHEL, R is available via the EPEL (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL) and more information is available there relative to configuring your system to use the EPEL. Once you have done so, you can install R using:

  yum install R

as root.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz