Install libcurl on google compute engine cluster in R

Question

I have a google compute engine cluster in R set up by googlecomputeenginer package.

Each of the nodes is r-base n1-standard VM but was installed with dplyr after creation.

I need to be able to install httr and curl packages on my rbase nodes.

When I try to install "httr" or "curl" I get the following error:

clusterEvalQ(cl, install.packages("curl"))



Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/curl’
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/curl’
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/curl’

Can someone help me out with this? How do I sudo-apt install libcurl across the whole cluster?

I tried:

###Doesn't do anything but print the output
> clusterEvalQ(cl, "sudo apt-get install libcurl-openssl-dev")
[[1]]
[1] "sudo apt-get install libcurl-openssl-dev"

[[2]]
[1] "sudo apt-get install libcurl-openssl-dev"

[[3]]
[1] "sudo apt-get install libcurl-openssl-dev"

Answer 1

The command

sudo apt-get install libcurl-openssl-dev

is not a R but a shell command. If you open a shell (command prompt) on each of your machines, you can issue this command. However, it is worth checking if binary packages are available. This depends on the used OS.