使用尚未在较新版本的R上更新的旧包

Question

I have updated R and get problems when I want to run old scripts. Specifically, one of the packages I use has been removed from CRAN and I get the following error message when I try to load the installed package (installed from a binary file of the latest version of the package without any problem. As you can see, the package in question is the ACER package):

Failed with error:  ‘package ‘acer’ was built before R 3.0.0: please re-install it’

Is it possible to recompile the source file to get binary files that work on R > 3.0.0?? This package worked fine on previous version R 3.0.1, but not on R 3.1.1. Is there any way I can get this package correctly loaded on R 3.1.1 (using either the source file or the file compiled for R 3.0.1?

I already tried to install from source, but it doesn't work. I get this error messages, which don't make too much sense to me. Is there an easy way out of this?

> install.packages(pkgs="acer_0.1.2.tar.gz", type="source", repos=NULL)

Installing package into ‘C:/Users/user/Documents/R/win-library/3.1’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
* installing *source* package 'acer' ...
** package 'acer' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs

*** arch - i386
Warning: running command 'make -f "Makevars.win" -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-31~1.1/etc/i386/Makeconf" -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-31~1.1/share/make/winshlib.mk" SHLIB_LDFLAGS='$(SHLIB_CXXLDFLAGS)' SHLIB_LD='$(SHLIB_CXXLD)' SHLIB="acer.dll" OBJECTS="estimate_acer.o peaks.o"' had status 127
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'acer'
* removing 'C:/Users/user/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/acer'
* restoring previous 'C:/Users/user/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/acer'
Warning messages:
1: running command '"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-31~1.1/bin/x64/R" CMD INSTALL -l "C:\Users\user\Documents\R\win-library\3.1" "acer_0.1.2.tar.gz"' had status 1 
2: In install.packages(pkgs = "acer_0.1.2.tar.gz", type = "source",  :
  installation of package ‘acer_0.1.2.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status

I also tried installing it from the command line but get similar errors. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Do you have Rcpp installed and on your path?

I think error code 127 on make means that the program couldn't be found in your $PATH and the only dependency of acer seems to be Rcpp.

Hope this helps -A