[R-sig-Debian] Rmpi install issues

[Skye Bender-deMoll]

Hi Folks,
  I've recently transitioned to Debian 8.0 and was having a hard time 
getting Rmpi to work.

I believed I'd successfully installed dependencies via

 > sudo apt-get install r-cran-rmpi

 > apt-show-versions r-cran-rmpi
r-cran-rmpi:amd64/jessie 0.6-5-1 uptodate

but when installing the package I was still getting

checking mpi.h presence... no
checking for mpi.h... no
configure: error: "Cannot find mpi.h header file"
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘Rmpi’

I discovered that /usr/lib/openmpi/include/ was missing

In hindsight, it is obvious that header files are only included when the 
dev version of openmpi is intalled:

 > sudo apt-get install libopenmpi-dev

After which Rmpi package installed without error.

I'm not very familiar with debian package management, but wouldn't most 
debian R users be building package from source?  If so, maybe 
libopenmpi-dev should be added as a dependency of r-cran-rmpi ?  If not, 
hopefully this post will help other users like me.

best,
  -skye