Encountering error when installing rpy2: Tried to guess R's HOME but no R command in the PATH

Question

I've seen a lot of posts here and elsewhere about this error, but none of the proposed solutions appear to be relevant. I'm on Python 2.7.9, I have an R executable in my path, and I'm trying to install it on an RHEL server not on Windows.

Here's the specific error I'm seeing. Does anybody have any idea what would be causing it or how to fix it? Thanks!

$ pip install rpy2
Downloading/unpacking rpy2
  Downloading rpy2-2.5.6.tar.gz (165kB): 165kB downloaded
  Running setup.py (path:/tmp/pip_build_my520/rpy2/setup.py) egg_info for package rpy2
    Error: Tried to guess R's HOME but no R command in the PATH.
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Error: Tried to guess R's HOME but no R command in the PATH.

Solution

Download the rpy2‑2.7.5‑cp35‑none‑win_amd64.whl file from Christoph Gohlke's Python Extension Packages for Windows repository here. Using the command line, change to the download folder and run:

pip install rpy2‑2.5.5‑cp34‑none‑win_amd64.whl

This should solve the R directory issue and rpy2 should install nicely. All credit to MattDMo.

Comments

[Ruby]

Just wanted to add: if cp34 didn't work, try download rpy2-2.7.8-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl if you use python27.

[Sher Afghan]

I am getting a similar error on Heroku and I can't figure how to apply this on Heroku. In my case when Heroku get to the line for installing rpy2 in my requirements file, it goes to the following link for downloading rpy2 and then produces the error. files.pythonhosted.org/packages/02/d1/…