[R-SIG-Mac] configure: error: "liblzma library and headers are required"

[Marius Hofert]

Hi,

I'd like to install R from source on a MacBook Pro 14 (M1 Pro Max) and do that
for the first time under Apple Silicon.  I could install all preliminaries from
source as I normally did under Intel Macs (even tcl and tk, gsl, gmp, mpfr, etc.).
However, the configure step of R fails with:

...
checking for lzma_version_number in -llzma... yes
checking for lzma.h... no
configure: error: "liblzma library and headers are required"

Related to this problem, I found the references below. However, none of the
suggested solutions worked for me.

The problem seems to be the installation of xz (and, as the references suggest, a similar
problem will arise from pcre2). The header file lzma.h is not found.

Here are the things I tried:

1) A plain 'brew install xz'.

2) Adding the directories where lzma.h is found to PATH:
/usr/local/bin/xz/include/lzma.h
/opt/R/arm64/include/lzma.h
/opt/homebrew/include/lzma.h
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/xz/5.2.5/include/lzma.h

3) Following https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#Native-builds:
3.1) Creating /opt/R/arm64
3.2) Downloading xz-5.2.5-darwin.20-arm64.tar.xz from https://mac.r-project.org/bin/darwin20/arm64/
and unpacking it to /opt/R/arm64
3.3) Adding /opt/R/arm64 to PATH

How can xz be installed in Apple Silicon so that configure finds it including headers?

Let me know if you need more information.

Thanks & cheers,
Marius

References:
https://groups.google.com/g/r-sig-mac/c/UPPDNxn7ab4
https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html#Prerequisites
https://mac.r-project.org/bin/darwin20/arm64/
https://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-mac@r-project.org/msg05844.html
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40222371/install-r-with-shared-library-in-osx-liblzma-library-missing
https://pj.freefaculty.org/blog/?p=315