R make install failing, missing documents

Question

I'm attempting to compile and install R 3.6.1 from the tar.gz on Ubuntu 18.04. All appears to go fine during configure and make, and then when attempting to install I get this

installing doc ...
/usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'NEWS': No such file or directory
/usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'NEWS.pdf': No such file or directory
/usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'NEWS.rds': No such file or directory
/usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'NEWS': No such file or directory
/usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'NEWS.pdf': No such file or directory
Makefile:121: recipe for target 'install-sources2' failed
make[1]: *** [install-sources2] Error 1

I have no idea what could have caused this, have compiled numerous versions before with no problem.

My configure statement looks like this:

./configure --enable-R-shlib --with-blas=-lopenblas --enable-memory-profiling

Any idea what is going wrong? This is a new machine, could I be missing something basic like a document or pdf handler? Thanks, J

Answer 1

Found the problem! New machine trying to get it up running quickly and had not yet installed latex. Installed Latex and all went fine.

Apparently this is picked during the configure stage but is not a fatal error. Perhaps it should b?

Answer 2

After a suggestion in the comments, I am posting my solution that circumvents the problem via the let-them-eat-cake approach—create the necessary zero-byte files:

cd doc
touch NEWS NEWS.pdf NEWS.rds

If something else (from the non-essential bunch) is missing, you can easily touch the missing things to make the compiler gobble the dummies.