[R-sig-Debian] Ubuntu 8.10: Package installation fails (lf77blas problem)

[Ulrich Keller]

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 (i386) from 8.04. After the upgrade, I ran
update.packages(.libPaths()[1]) in R to get the packages installed from source
up to date too. Unfortunately, two packages could not be updated: mclust and
mboost. In both cases, the error I got mentioned lf77blas. Here's the output for
mboost:

* Installing *source* package 'mboost' ...
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include      -fpic  -g -O2 -c mboost.c -o mboost.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -shared  -o mboost.so mboost.o -lf77blas -latlas -lgfortran -lm 
-L/usr/lib/R/lib -lR
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lf77blas
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [mboost.so] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'mboost'

I guess this has something to do with the removal of the g77 package from Ubuntu
8.10. Is there anything I can do short of compiling g77 and/or R myself?