[R-pkg-devel] How to fix Tcl/Tk Error on Mac OS build

[Simon Urbanek]

Thanks, indeed, as part of full re-install for R 4.2.0 package builds the Tcl/Tk libraries were missing. Now fixed and summarytools check with

* checking data for non-ASCII characters ... NOTE
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Status: 1 NOTE

I'll just repeat the important link that Tomas posted: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/external_libs.html

On a slightly orthogonal note (not related to the question other than it involves tcltk): I'd like to point out that Tcl/Tk is often not available on computing servers, so I would recommend packages that do not provide GUI tools to avoid dependence on tcltk if not strictly necessary as it prevents the use in headless HPC environments.

Cheers,
Simon


> On Apr 26, 2022, at 2:45 PM, Dominic Comtois <dominic.comtois using gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I was asked by CRAN to fix some problems appearing in my summarytools
> <https://cran.r-project.org/web/checks/check_results_summarytools.html>'
> package build checks. Trivial email problems aside, on the summary page
> <https://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macos-arm64/summarytools-00check.html>
> for the Mac OS build, I see:
> 
> [...]
> checking whether package ‘summarytools’ can be installed ... [1s/1s] ERROR
> Installation failed.
> See
> ‘/Volumes/Builds/packages/big-sur-arm64/results/4.2/summarytools.Rcheck/00install.out’
> for details.
> [...]
> 
> On the details page
> <https://www.r-project.org/nosvn/R.check/r-release-macos-arm64/summarytools-00install.html>,
> I see:
> 
> [...]
> ** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loadingtcltk DLL is
> linked to '/opt/R/arm64/lib/libtk8.6.dylib'
> Error: .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'tcltk', details:
>  call: fun(libname, pkgname)
>  error: Tcl/Tk libraries are missing: install the Tcl/Tk component
> from the R installerExecution halted
> ERROR: lazy loading failed for package ‘summarytools’
> [...]
> 
> Tcl/Tk is used by some functions to allow users to bring up an "open
> file...", & "save file..." dialogs & message boxes, as well as the
> tclvalue() function. In my NAMESPACE, I have:
> 
> importFrom(tcltk,tclvalue)
> importFrom(tcltk,tk_messageBox)
> importFrom(tcltk,tkgetOpenFile)
> importFrom(tcltk,tkgetSaveFile)
> 
> Also, a prerequisite is to have XQuartz <https://www.xquartz.org/>
> installed on Mac OS.
> 
> Summarytools has been around for a while, and I never had this problem
> before. And since I don't have a Mac machine, I'm not sure how to go about
> this. A Google search reveals that several other packages have the same
> issue. But I wasn't able to find the root cause nor a proper solution. Any
> tips / pointers would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Dominic Comtois
> summarytools
> <https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/summarytools/index.html> author &
> maintainer
> 
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> 
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