Can't install package reshape2 for R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4

Question

I am having trouble installing the reshape2 package for R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS. I decided not to upgrade to R 3.x because many of the packages that I use have not been upgraded to support the new version.

When I try to install reshape2 using R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, I get the following.

> install.packages("reshape2")                                                                                      
Installing package(s) into â/usr/local/lib/R/site-libraryâ
(as âlibâ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages("reshape2") :
  'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable
Would you like to use a personal library instead?  (y/n) y
Would you like to create a personal library
~/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15
to install packages into?  (y/n) y

Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available
also installing the dependencies âplyrâ, âstringrâ

trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/plyr_1.8.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 393233 bytes (384 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 384 Kb

trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/stringr_0.6.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 20636 bytes (20 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 20 Kb

trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/reshape2_1.2.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 27220 bytes (26 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 26 Kb

ERROR: dependency âRcppâ is not available for package âplyrâ
* removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/plyrâ
* installing *source* package âstringrâ ...
** package âstringrâ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded

* DONE (stringr)
ERROR: dependency âplyrâ is not available for package âreshape2â
* removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/reshape2â

The downloaded source packages are in
        â/tmp/RtmpxP5OIc/downloaded_packagesâ
Warning messages:
1: In install.packages("reshape2") :
  installation of package âplyrâ had non-zero exit status
2: In install.packages("reshape2") :
  installation of package âreshape2â had non-zero exit status
> 

I tried to then install the missing Rcpp but get the error message:

Warning message:
package âRcppâ is not available (for R version 2.15.3) 

I searched some more and discovered that Rcpp now requires R version 3.x but that there is a RcppClassic version that is backwards compatible.

When trying to install RcppClassic, I get:

Installing package(s) into â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15â
(as âlibâ is unspecified)
Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available
trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/RcppClassic_0.9.5.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 185057 bytes (180 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 180 Kb

ERROR: dependency âRcppâ is not available for package âRcppClassicâ
* removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/RcppClassicâ

The downloaded source packages are in
        â/tmp/RtmpxP5OIc/downloaded_packagesâ
Warning message:
In install.packages("RcppClassic") :
  installation of package âRcppClassicâ had non-zero exit status

I then tried and was able to install Rcpp using "sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp":

$ sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp                                             
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libgudev-1.0-0 gir1.2-gudev-1.0
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  littler r-cran-int64
Suggested packages:
  r-cran-getopt r-cran-inline
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  littler r-cran-int64 r-cran-rcpp
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,899 kB of archives.
After this operation, 11.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Get:1 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe littler amd64 0.1.5-1 [32.2 kB]
Get:2 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe r-cran-int64 amd64 1.1.2-1 [359 kB]
Get:3 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe r-cran-rcpp amd64 0.9.9-1 [2,508 kB]
Fetched 2,899 kB in 0s (8,959 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package littler.
(Reading database ... 60157 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking littler (from .../littler_0.1.5-1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package r-cran-int64.
Unpacking r-cran-int64 (from .../r-cran-int64_1.1.2-1_amd64.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package r-cran-rcpp.
Unpacking r-cran-rcpp (from .../r-cran-rcpp_0.9.9-1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up littler (0.1.5-1) ...
Setting up r-cran-int64 (1.1.2-1) ...
Setting up r-cran-rcpp (0.9.9-1) ...

But when I tried to install "reshape2" in R, I got the same error messages as before.

What I don't understand is why I'm getting the error message:

Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available

Since 'sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp' worked

After some more searching, I found a vignette on how to use RcppClassic here: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RcppClassic/vignettes/RcppClassic-intro.pdf

However, making modifications to the DESCRIPTION, NAMESPACE and MAKEVAR files is starting to go beyond my capabilities so I'm reaching out for help.

Here's the output from sessionInfo():

> sessionInfo()
R version 2.15.3 (2013-03-01)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C                 
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base    

Thanks in advance!

EDIT 3/15/2014: My "use case" is that I'm running a series of periodic jobs on AWS EC2 instances so I don't need the latest/greatest software features. What I have using R 2.15 on my Mac development machine works so I was just looking to port what I have to my AWS EC2 Ubuntu instances.

The packages I use are: reshape2, xlsx (and xlsxjars), RJSONIO, stringr, R2HTML, RCurl, plots, lattice, latticeExtra, gdata and ggplot2.

Answer 1

A few things:

1. You insist on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. A stable distribution. That is fine. Your choice. It also means you chose to freeze your software at a point a few months before April 2012.

2. Now you want something from CRAN. Something current. That is in conflict with the previous point.

3. Either you stay in distro. Or you become current.

4. Read the Ubuntu README and learn to how to stay with Ubuntu 12.04 yet at the same time get a current R package .

5. Install R 3.0.3 (current) via that repo.

6. Install the CRAN packages you want into /usr/local/lib/R/site-library .