[R] Issue building from source on RHEL7

[Ivan Krylov]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 08:23:52 +0000
Stéphane Plaisance <Stephane.Plaisance using vib.be> wrote:

> I finally went for the build from source as detailed on the RStudio
> site (https://docs.posit.co/resources/install-r-source/).

The official installation manual can be found at
<https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/R-admin.html>, not at
the Posit website.

> $ ./configure \
>     --prefix=/opt/R \
>     --enable-memory-profiling \
>     --enable-R-shlib \
>     --with-blas \
>     --with-lapack
> $ make
> $ make check
> $ sudo make install

This should have worked. In fact, I cannot reproduce your problem on my
own: with the same command line, R passes the check and runs both from
the build directory as ./bin/R and (after a `make install`) from the
prefix I specified.

> $ bin/R
> Error in gzfile(file, "rb") : cannot open the connection
> In addition: Warning message:
> In gzfile(file, "rb") :
> cannot open compressed file '/usr/lib64/R/library/base/R/base.rdx',
> probable reason 'No such file or directory'

Something about remembering the prefix must have gone horribly wrong,
making your build of R confused enough to go looking for its files in
the wrong directory. Do you have any lingering R-related environment
variables set? Does `env | grep R` show anything useful? Is there
anything useful about the prefix in config.log? Do the generated files
src/scripts/R.fe and bin/R contain the right value of the R_HOME_DIR
variable?

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-- 
Best regards,
Ivan