无法安装 R 包“nloptr”（Ubuntu 16.04 上的 R3.6.2） - C++ 编译器问题

Question

I'm having trouble installing the "car" package after upgrading R to 3.6.2 (from 3.4) on Ubuntu 16.04 due to (at least one) dependency (nloptr) that cannot be installed either. It seems to be a problem of the C++ compiler (it is using some deprecated "config" settings, however I'm lost trying to fix this).

I called the following command in R (from the terminal):

install.packages("nloptr")

Error Information:

Installing package into ‘/home/heike/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.6’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
trying URL 'https://ftp.fau.de/cran/src/contrib/nloptr_1.2.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 2448313 bytes (2.3 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 2.3 MB
* installing source package ‘nloptr’ ...
** package ‘nloptr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
'config' variable 'CPP' is deprecated
'config' variable 'CXXCPP' is deprecated
checking whether the C++ compiler works... no
configure: error: in /tmp/RtmpPLaJFA/R.INSTALL5e5ed06eeac/nloptr': configure: error: C++ compiler cannot create executables See config.log' for more details
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘nloptr’

Steps taken so far

• changed CRAN mirror and source.list entry
• uninstalled and reinstalled R 3.6.2 (also on different machine), same issue remained

System Information

• OS Version: Ubuntu 16.04 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit))
• R Version: 3.6.2 (2019-12-12)

Answer 1

We have done a lot of work to make nloptr installation better. In essence, you have several choices:

• if the system version of the nlopt library is present, use it -- that is the easiest so try installing it via sudo apt-get install libnlopt-dev and then reinstall

• if it is not found, then a download of the source and build happens, and this seems to fail on your almost four year old Ubuntu system as it is hard to support all flavours --- but this works swimmingly on newer ones (I run Ubuntu too, but currently 19.10)

• there are binaries for you as, see the Ubuntu packages page -- however these may not match your current R version which is mismatches to your distro R version

• dependening on where you got R from (did you install a .deb?) you could use the Michael Rutter PPAs to get a current r-cran-nloptr

All this can also be discussed in detail on the r-sig-debian list for R on Debian and Ubuntu.

Edit: In response to the comment below:

• To see what package apt knows about, do apt-cache policy r-cran-nloptr . Per the link I gave above we know Ubuntu has a r-cran-nloptr for your (very old) Xenial installation. However it will clash with the very new and current R you have running. Such as the costs of mixing and matching.

• To access the Rutter PPAs and its over four thousand current binaries see the fourth paragraph at the top of the Ubuntu at CRAN README

Edit 2: I may have been too pessimistic. The Rutter PPA for the current R binaries has trusty, xenial and bionic. See https://launchpad.net/~marutter/+archive/ubuntu/c2d4u3.5