[R-sig-Debian] proplems installing R 2.5 on Ubuntu 14.04

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Lentes, Bernd <
bernd.lentes at helmholtz-muenchen.de> wrote:

>
>
> ----- Am 8. Nov 2016 um 15:26 schrieb Johannes Ranke
> johannes.ranke at jrwb.de:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > try
> >
> > apt-get build-dep r-base
> >
> > this installs the headers required for building current R, which
> probably also
> > covers older versions - at least it will give you X11 headers.
> >
> > Good luck,
> >
> > Johannes
> >
> >
> Hi Johannes,
>
> i tried that and it didn't work.
>
> Bernd
>

If you expect people to help you need to be much more explicit about what
you mean by "it didn't work".    As you have discovered, building an old
version of R on a current system may not be a simple task.  Over my career
I have resorted to porting old software to current platforms a few times in
order to understand puzzling results from some past calculation.  I have
learned to hang on to old manuals so I at least have documentation for
function arguments and compiler flags on the original system.

You might consider alternatives:

1. running an older OS and R in a VM

2. porting your old R package to a current version of R

3. finding a current R package with the functionality of the old package

4. building an old version of R without X11 graphics, as in:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26263934/compile-r-with-cairo-support-without-x11

5. building the current version of R to ensure that you have a working
build environment, then porting the old version of R to that environment.
Since I
have access to a system with the development packages needed for a current
R, I just tried "./configure" for R-2.5.1 and get:

configure: error: --with-x=yes (default) and X11 headers/libs are not
available

Looking in config.log, I see:

configure:44433: gcc -std=gnu99 -o conftest -g -O2  -I/usr/local/include
 -L/usr
/local/lib64 conftest.c -lXt -ldl -lm  >&5
/tmp/cc8fJIay.o: In function `main':
/home/gwhite/Documents/Testing/R-2.5.1/conftest.c:205: undefined reference
to `XrmInitialize'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
configure:44439: $? = 1
configure: failed program was:
| /* confdefs.h.  */
| #define PACKAGE_NAME "R"
| #define PACKAGE_TARNAME "R"
| #define PACKAGE_VERSION "2.5.1"
| #define PACKAGE_STRING "R 2.5.1"
[...]
 #define SUPPORT_MBCS 1
| /* end confdefs.h.  */
| #include <X11/Xlib.h>
| #ifdef F77_DUMMY_MAIN
|
| #  ifdef __cplusplus
|      extern "C"
| #  endif
|    int F77_DUMMY_MAIN() { return 1; }
|
| #endif
| int
| main ()
| {
| XrmInitialize ()
|   ;
|   return 0;
| }
configure:44503: result: no
configure:46230: error: --with-x=yes (default) and X11 headers/libs are not
available

>From past experience, this led me to try:

./configure LIBS=X11

which worked, as did "make" and "make check".


-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

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