[R] Using iconv from glibc

[Smith, Virgil]

The R Installation and Administration manual section A.1 states that glibc should provide a suitable iconv function, but I can't get R's configure script to accept/validate iconv on a platform I need to support using glibc 2.20.

Is glibc is actually compatible (or if gnu libiconv is essentially the only path)?

If glibc should work, what should I check to troubleshoot my environment?

The configure error I get is
    checking iconv.h usability... yes
    checking iconv.h presence... yes
    checking for iconv.h... yes
    checking for iconv... yes
    checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1", "ASCII" and "UCS-*"... no
    configure: error: a suitable iconv is essential

My full list of installed glibc / libc packages is
    glibc-binary-localedata-en-gb - 2.20-r0
    glibc-binary-localedata-en-us - 2.20-r0
    glibc-gconv - 2.20-r0
    glibc-gconv-utf-16 - 2.20-r0
    glibc-locale-en-gb - 2.20-r0
    libc6 - 2.20-r0
    libc6-dev - 2.20-r0
    libc6-extra-nss - 2.20-r0
    libc6-thread-db - 2.20-r0



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