Error installing R devtools: `Error in loadNamespace`

Question

There was a broken devtools package in the system:

Error: package ‘devtools’ was built for x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0

An attempt to uninstall brings no result:

Removing package from ‘/home/user/tools/R/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu-library/3.1’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Error in find.package(pkgs, lib) : there is no package called ‘devtools’

Now I try to install it and getting an error:

install.packages("devtools")
* installing to library ‘/tools/R/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu-library/3.1’
* installing *source* package ‘devtools’ ...
** package ‘devtools’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
gcc -m64 -std=gnu99 -I/usr/include/R -DNDEBUG  -I/usr/local/include    -fpic  -O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m64 -mtune=generic  -c devtools.c -o devtools.o
gcc -m64 -std=gnu99 -shared -L/usr/lib64/R/lib -L/usr/local/lib64 -o devtools.so devtools.o -L/usr/lib64/R/lib -lR
installing to /tools/R/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu-library/3.1/devtools/libs
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
Error in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]) :
  object 'vI' not found
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package ‘devtools’
* removing ‘/tools/R/x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu-library/3.1/devtools’

Any ideas how to proceed? I am on CentOS6, R version 3.2.3 (2015-12-10)

Answer 1

You cannot mix

x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0

which is for OS X / Macintosh with the Linux you have:

x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu

Your best bet is probably to start with

install.packages("devtools", repos="http://cloud.r-project.org")

and to look very carefully and any error messages you may get in order to resolve missing build dependencies.