[R] troubles installing R

[Cable, Sam B Civ USAF AFMC AFRL/RVBXI]

I am trying to install R on a pretty up-to-date CentOS system.  I have
tried installing 2.14.0 and 2.13.2.  In both cases, the configure step
fails, and does not produce a Makefile.  So, of course, I can't issue
"make".

The errors that I can find in config.log are, first, several missing
files: ac_nonexistent.h, minix/config.h., readline/history.h, and
readline/readline.h.

Then, what seems to finally bring configure to a halt is the final
error:

configure:20796: error: --with-readline=yes (default) and headers/libs
are not available

After this error, configure dumps long lists of shell variables, output
variables, and confdefs.h -- none of which tell a whole lot, as far as I
can see -- and then exits with a status of "1".

Anyone know what this means?  I can give bigger snippets of the
config.log, if anyone wants to see them.

I have installed R on several Linux machines.  This is the first time
I've been stumped.

Thanks.

--Sam