[R] What happened to Canada?

[Rolf Turner]

On 03/11/15 12:52, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> Hi Rolf,
>
> See below.

<SNIP>

> Martin Morgan's reply seems like it is on point.

Indeed.  The problem arises from a lack of "libcurl" capabilities.

> I would follow his logic regarding libcurl and https support, but it
> would be helpful to know how you installed R.
>
> Fedora 17 has been EOL'd for >2 years, so I am guessing that you
> installed from source, since the EPEL and most Fedora repos would not
> typically support EOL'd distros due to the risk of dated dependencies
> and version related incompatibilities.

Yes.  I installed from source.

> That might suggest that the config/compilation incantation may not
> have used libcurl or not a version with https support enabled.

After digging around a bit in config.log I see an indication that
the version of libcurl needs to be >= 7.28.0.

The version that I have, which seems to be the latest that is available 
for my poor old Fedora 17, is 7.24.0.  So therein lies the problem.

(Goes away and beats the keyboard to death for an hour or two ....)

I have now managed to install a recent version of libcurl --- from 
source; no recent version is available for Fedora 17 via yum --- and 
after considerable travail got R to configure and build using the new 
libcurl.

Strangely, the configure.log for R showed no sign of problems after I 
installed the new libcurl, but then "make check" threw an error --- 
apparently R could not find the new version.  The default install for 
libcurl put it in /usr/local/share/... and R looked in /usr/share/... 
There must be a way to tell R to look in /usr/local/share but I couldn't 
figure it out and re-installed libcurl, telling the install to use /usr 
as the install directory.

Then I configured, made and installed R and, mirabile dictu, it is now 
the case that chooseCRANmirror() works as advertised without throwing 
any error.

Supplementary question:  Given that I want to be "secure" I can/should 
no longer use my local New Zealand mirror.  Does anyone reading this 
know if, and if so, when the New Zealand mirror will be reconfigured to 
provide https rather than http protocol?

Ta.

cheers,

Rolf

P. S.  You wrote:

> There are references/pointers pertaining to libcurl in the
> Installation and Administration manual.

Yes, but these (as far as I can discern) relate only to *Windoze* which 
civilised people such as my very good self do not use.

R.

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