[R] Installing rgl package under Ubuntu

[Van Campenhout Bjorn]

> Dear Rexperts,
> 
> lately I'm having troubles installing the rgl package via 
> install.packages("rgl", dependencies=T) in the R 2.4.0 
> backport running under Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I get the following 
> error messages, despite having installed libx11-dev (as 
> recommended in a similar post about SUSE
> 10.1):
> 
> trying URL 'http://cran.xedio.de/src/contrib/rgl_0.68.tar.gz'
> Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 701566 bytes opened 
> URL ==================================================
> downloaded 685Kb
> 
> * Installing *source* package 'rgl' ...
> checking for gcc... gcc
> checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out 
> checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking whether 
> we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of executables...
> checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we 
> are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether gcc 
> accepts -g... yes checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... 
> none needed checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E 
> checking for X... no
> configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
> ERROR: configuration failed for package 'rgl'
> ** Removing '/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rgl'
> 
> The downloaded packages are in
>         /tmp/Rtmpni68vG/downloaded_packages
> Warning message:
> installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status in:
> install.packages("rgl", dependencies = T)
> +---------------------------------------+
> 
> Has anyone experienced a similar problem, and what would be 
> the resolution of the "X11 not found" message?

On my ubuntu 6.06 LTS, I pass the test (tho I do get errors later during
compilation).  When checking for X, it says:
 
...
Checking for X... Libraries /usr/X11R6/lib, headers
...

I compiled R 2.4.0 from source, which also gave me some trouble when
checking for X.  I think I solved it by installing xserver-xorg-dev.
Hope this gives you some pointers


Bjorn

> 
> Thank you in advance!
> 
> Greets,
> Ivailo
> 
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