Error while installing devtools in Ubuntu

Question

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing"

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Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)

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> install.packages('devtools')

Installing package into ‘/home/kingslee/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)

Warning in install.packages :

  dependency ‘xml2’ is not available

also installing the dependency ‘rversions’

--2015-07-29 12:02:27-- 
https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/rversions_1.0.2.tar.gz

Resolving cran.rstudio.com (cran.rstudio.com)... 54.230.188.51

Connecting to cran.rstudio.com (cran.rstudio.com)|54.230.188.51|:443... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 4654 (4.5K) [application/x-gzip]

Saving to: ‘/tmp/Rtmpcd8fcf/downloaded_packages/rversions_1.0.2.tar.gz’

     0K ....                                                  100%  
540M=0s

2015-07-29 12:02:29 (540 MB/s) - 

‘/tmp/Rtmpcd8fcf/downloaded_packages/rversions_1.0.2.tar.gz’ saved [4654/4654]

--2015-07-29 12:02:29--  https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/devtools_1.8.0.tar.gz

Resolving cran.rstudio.com (cran.rstudio.com)... 54.230.188.51

Connecting to cran.rstudio.com (cran.rstudio.com)|54.230.188.51|:443... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 141487 (138K) [application/x-gzip]

Saving to: ‘/tmp/Rtmpcd8fcf/downloaded_packages/devtools_1.8.0.tar.gz’

     0K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 36%  388K 0s
    50K .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... 72%  487K 0s
   100K .......... .......... .......... ........             100%  440K=0.3s

2015-07-29 12:02:30 (434 KB/s) - 

‘/tmp/Rtmpcd8fcf/downloaded_packages/devtools_1.8.0.tar.gz’ saved [141487/141487]

ERROR: dependency ‘xml2’ is not available for package ‘rversions’

* removing ‘/home/kingslee/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/rversions’
Warning in install.packages :

  installation of package ‘rversions’ had non-zero exit status

ERROR: dependency ‘rversions’ is not available for package ‘devtools’

* removing ‘/home/kingslee/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/devtools’
Warning in install.packages :

  installation of package ‘devtools’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in

    ‘/tmp/Rtmpcd8fcf/downloaded_packages’

Answer 1

You might to install that xml tool on the machine.

sudo apt-get -y install libxml2-dev

If that does indeed get rid of your error, you should follow this post for more instructions on how to get R properly set up on Ubuntu