[R] How to read ./configure messages

[Peter Langfelder]

I am not overly familar with Mint, but you need the "development
version" of the readline library. If you have a GUI package manager
installed, open it and search for readline. You should see a version
that ends with -dev or -devel; you need to install that.

HTH,

Peter

On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 3:06 PM, p_connolly <p_connolly at slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
>
> I've installed R from the tgz file since about R-0.9.x following the
> INSTALL instructions and have always succeeded using rpm-based OSes.
> With each new OS, that involved installing various additional packages
> before the configure script would complete.  Figuring out which
> packages were required usually involved searching for rpms that
> supplied missing .so or .h files, dev packages or something else I
> could figure out.
>
> I'm now trying to do the same with LinuxMint 17.2 but I got stuck when
> this message came up:
>
>    checking for main in -ltermlib... no
>    checking for rl_callback_read_char in -lreadline... no
>    checking for history_truncate_file... no
>    configure: error: --with-readline=yes (default) and headers/libs are not
> available
>
> Near the bottom of the log file it shows this:
>
>    configure:6747: gcc -E -I/usr/local/include conftest.c
>    configure:6747: $? = 0
>    configure:6761: gcc -E -I/usr/local/include conftest.c
>    conftest.c:17:28: fatal error: ac_nonexistent.h: No such file or
> directory
>     #include <ac_nonexistent.h>
>                                ^
>    compilation terminated.
>    configure:6761: $? = 1
>    configure: failed program was:
>    | /* confdefs.h */
>    | #define PACKAGE_NAME "R"
>
> So I'm assuming that's behind the failure.  Searching shows the same
> problem shows up in all sorts of places for decades, notably cygwin
> users.  But I didn't see anything that would help to work out what is
> missing.
>
> Ideas greatly appreciated.
>
>
> best
> Patrick
>
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