[R] PCRE configure problem with R-4.0.0

[Ista Zahn]

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 3:51 AM Ivan Krylov <krylov.r00t using gmail.com> wrote:
>
> First of all, you mentioned Linux Mint, so you might get better advice
> on R-SIG-Debian mailing list.
>
> On Mon, 4 May 2020 16:15:42 +1200
> Patrick Connolly <p_connolly using slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
>
> >There are quite a lot of packages in the repository for Linux Mint
> >17.2 with 'pcre' in the name and these are installed:
>
> >Apparantly the '3' doesn't indicate an updated '2' version
>
> The funny thing about libpcre3 is that it is the old PCRE1 version,
> third ABI-incompatible upgrade of it [*], and libpcre2 (available in
> current releases of Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian) is supposed to be
> the newer PCRE2.
>
> Linux Mint 17.2 is based on Ubuntu 14.04, which has been released in
> April 2014, while PCRE2 has been released in 2015.

Moreover, support for 17.2 ended over a year ago (according to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint_version_history). I suggest
upgrading to a supported version.

Best,
Ista

This might be the
> reason why libpcre2 doesn't seem to be available to you (I have tried
> searching both repositories, including backports, with no success).
> Moreover, Ubuntu 14.04 only has PCRE 8.31, which is too old to work
> with R 4.0. The official builds of R 4.0 [**] are not available for
> Ubuntu 14.04, either.
>
> > Suggestions welcome.
>
> You can try to backport PCRE 8.32 for Linux Mint 17.2 by taking the
> source package for 8.31 (apt-get source pcre3), extracting the new
> version of PCRE into it and fiddling with it until it builds (see
> [***] for more information on that). This is a complicated procedure,
> and if an important system component depends on PCRE, you can end up
> breaking the system.
>
> You can also try to install latest PCRE2 from source (./configure; make;
> sudo make install) into /usr/local where it shouldn't interfere too much
> with the rest of the system.
>
> Another option could be upgrading to a supported release of Linux Mint
> and installing the official binary build from [**].
>
> Good luck!
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Ivan
>
> [*]
> https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html#run-time-shared-libraries
>
> [**] https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/
>
> [***] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help using r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
> 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.