[R-sig-Debian] Binding with libiconv failed while compiling R-devel on Ubuntu 17.04

[Matthias Zytnicki]

Dear everyone,

I posted a similar question to Stack Overflow there: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46907554/binding-with-libiconv-failed-while-compiling-r-devel-on-ubuntu-17-04 and I was suggested to post my question here.

I tried to compile R devel using Dirk Eddelbuettel's recipe (and many variants of it).  Regardless of what I do, I have:
===
  	[...]/src/main/sysutils.c:794: undefined reference to `libiconv'
  	[...]
  	[...]/src/main/platform.c:3052: undefined reference to `u_getVersion_54'
  	[...]
===
add many other similar lines, similar to the last comment of http://jtremblay.github.io/software_installation/2017/06/21/Install-R-3.4.0-and-RStudio-on-Ubuntu-16.04

(Of note: the offending line does not contain "libiconv" per se, but instead "iconv(...)".)

It seems that libiconv is now in libc6. I checked that these packages are correctly installed, and updated (with Gnome Ubuntu 17.04):
   - libc6-dev
   - libicu-dev
   - build-essential
   - fort77
   - xorg-dev
   - liblzma-dev
   - libblas-dev
   - gfortran
   - gcc-multilib
   - gobjc++
   - aptitude
   - libreadline-dev
   - libcurl4-openssl-dev
   - default-jdk
   - texlive-latex-base
   - libcairo2-dev

The configuration step regarding libiconv seems ok:
===
  	checking iconv.h usability... yes
  	checking iconv.h presence... yes
  	checking for iconv.h... yes
  	checking for iconv... yes
  	checking whether iconv accepts "UTF-8", "latin1", "ASCII" and "UCS-*"... yes
  	checking for iconvlist... no
  	checking for iconv... yes
  	checking for iconv declaration...
  			 extern size_t iconv (iconv_t cd, char * *inbuf, size_t *inbytesleft, char * *outbuf, size_t *outbytesleft);
===
The command iconv -l seems to work fine. This C file compiles with no problem either:
===
  	#include <iconv.h>

  	int main( int argc, char **argv ) {
  					iconv_t cd = iconv_open( "UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1" );
  					iconv_close( cd );
  					return 0;
  	}
===
So libiconv seems to be indeed usable, but not during the linking.

Where should I look?