[R-SIG-Mac] problem installing packages from terminal
Simon Urbanek
simon.urbanek at r-project.org
Sat Jun 4 21:11:04 CEST 2005
Hi Federico,
On Jun 4, 2005, at 2:18 PM, Federico Calboli wrote:
> I tried to install Hmisc from source, but I had errors due to
> permission issues
Are you sure? Please look at the output more closely. Hmisc usually
fails due to compiler problems, not permission issues. If you are
using R binary from CRAN, you don't need to use root for
installation, any user with admin privileges will do. The last
warning about permissions on .css can be safely discarded and has
nothing to do with the success/failure of a package installation.
Furthermore R.app checks permissions before installation, so it would
ask for authorization if there were any permission issues.
Finally, you can use R.app to install as root as well - if you want
to force installation as root, click on the "lock" icon in the tool
bar, the installation will then be performed as root (but usually
this is not necessary, see above).
> (I enabled root form my box). I tried to install from the terminal
> after su-ing to root, but I get the following:
>
> > install.packages("locfit")
> --- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
You didn't select CRAN mirror. You should either set it globally or
supply the url to install.packages. Also note that the default on
CRAN OS X is binary installation, so what you probably want is rather
install.packages("Hmisc",repos="http://cran.us.r-
project.org/",type="source") - of course replace with your mirror of
choice.
> I'd rather not log out and log in again as root to install stuff
> that needs g77... (I did for Hmisc, and worked like a charm).
You don't need to - in fact it's not recommended to enable the root
user on OS X and it's completely unnecessary, because you should be
using sudo with the same effect without potentially hazardous side-
effects of enabling root.
Cheers,
Simon
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