[R-sig-Debian] libcurl issue when manually installing R-3.3.3 on Debian 3.16.0-4-amd64

[Lucio Marcello]

Dear all,

I am trying to upgrade R on Debian 3.16.0-4-amd64, as the default R version is 3.1.1 (2014). When I try to run ./configure on R-3.3.3, I get an error message saying

...
checking for curl-config... /usr/local/bin/curl-config
checking libcurl version ... 7.53.1
checking curl/curl.h usability... yes
checking curl/curl.h presence... yes
checking for curl/curl.h... yes
checking if libcurl is version 7 and >= 7.28.0... yes
checking if libcurl supports https... no
configure: error: libcurl >= 7.28.0 library and headers are required with support for https

I received the following advice from a senior Debian user:

"Encryption has gone through some growing pains lately, with older versions of the standard encryption protocol being effectively black listed. (TLS v1.0 had holes, now it must be TLS v1.1 or above).

So, whilst it says you have SSL, libcurl will be critical of the version and say you don't (because the SSL version is black listed).

It is possible that updating libssl-dev, openssl-dev (or whatever they are called) will make curl happy, because Debian might have updated their packages to keep up with the times. You might need to uncomment the security updates in /etc/apt/sources. OTOH, they might not... in which case you need to download and build openssl yourself, and then build libcurl, making very sure it uses your openssl and not the standard openssl. I do recall it is a pain to stop it seeking out the standard openssl."

Following the above suggestions and some information I found online I installed
libcurl4-openssl-dev, but this hasn't solved the problem. I now am getting further problems installing other packages (hyphy)

/etc/hyphy$ cmake .
cmake: /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so.4: no version information available (required by cmake)
Segmentation fault

I am not sure whether the latter is related to some other installation fault that occurred when I was trying to fix R, but I would rather get some advice before proceeding any further, as I don't have enough experience to identify and solve the problem directly.

Many thanks for any help!

All the best,

Lucio
Inverness College UHI, a partner in the University of the Highlands and Islands www.inverness.uhi.ac.uk Board of Management of Inverness College (known as Inverness College UHI), Scottish Charity No SC021197.

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