[R-sig-Debian] "Graphics history" in UNIX

[Michael Dewey]

At 15:41 08/07/2010, Scotti Roberto wrote:

>Hello.
>I understand that, to build from source, you need to have all 
>sources (in the right place and with the right names, and so on),
>but your sentence,
>>To build from source you need to have development files installed.

Roberto,
My experience as a very naive Linux user with mostly Windows 
experience is that once you have the initial setup right subsequent 
installation of packages from source works very smoothly. I was quite 
nervous about the initial setup but the instructions on the welcome 
pages on CRAN were very helpful. I think when you look back in a few 
months time you will, like me, wonder why you were concerned in the 
first place.

If despite that you run into problems I have always found the experts 
on this list very helpful.

>stimulates a very basic question: "Is it possible to avoid building 
>from source using R in Kubuntu?
>I shifted over from MS only recently. In Windows I used to easily 
>download packages and use them.
>Now, every time I downloaded a new piece, I had the impression that 
>building from source was necessary.
>Am I wrong?
>Many thanks Roberto
>
>
>Il 24/06/2010 01:36, Liviu Andronic ha scritto:
>>Hello
>>
>>On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 9:39 PM, Scotti Roberto
>><roberto.scotti at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
>>>Thanks for caring. With this last fix playwith() could be an optimal
>>>substitution of the Windows "register" graphics tool.
>>>Unfortunately the practical side is quite hard and, up now, unsuccessful.
>>>It takes hours to understand that 'pkg-config' is a system library, not an
>>>R-package,
>>>that installed GTK components are insufficient, you have to guess which one
>>>of the 33 to-be-installed libgtk2 libraries are required
>>>and then finally compilation an linkage start progressing when you discover
>>>that 'cairoDevice()', this time an R component (??), has to be installed by
>>>its self but ... here I am stuck, see error below:  two members of DevDesc
>>>appear as missing!!
>>>Do you have any suggestion on how to proceed?
>>>
>>>
>>To build from source you need to have development files installed. On
>>Debian-based distros, you will mostly look for *-dev packages. For
>>example, you will probably need to install r-base-dev. For playwith, I
>>expect that you will need at least libgtk2.0-dev. As for cairoDevice
>>[1], you will need libcairo2-dev, I think. Then follow the error
>>messages for potential missing development files.
>>
>>Regards
>>Liviu
>>
>>[1] http://cran.at.r-project.org/web/packages/cairoDevice/index.html
>
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Michael Dewey
http://www.aghmed.fsnet.co.uk