How to configure R-3.1.2 with --enable-R-shlib

r rstudio

16,937

make uninstall only undoes the make install step, which generally copies the files from the compilation dir to dir(s) on the system as appropriate, and puts binaries in say /usr/bin so they are on the path. If you wanted to clean up the dir where you did a previous compile, use make clean (or make distclean, I forget what the difference is now as far as R is concerned but convention is that it should return the build dir to pre-configure, pre-build state.).

You also, in general, don't want to be building in the dir which contains the R sources (which ./configure suggests you are doing).

16,937

Barker

Data scientist with PhD from Stanford University with experience in machine learning for biomedical informatics, image processing and analysis, and time series forecasting.

Updated on October 17, 2022

Comments

Barker over 1 year
I had installed R-3.1.2 on Ubuntu using the commands
```
wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.1.2.tar.gz
tar xvfz R-3.1.2.tar.gz
cd R-3.1.2
./configure
make
sudo make install
```
When I tried to launch RStudio I got the error

R shared library (/usr/local/lib/R/lib/libR.so) not found. If this is a custom build of R, was it built with the --enable-R-shlib option?

So I went back and tried to reconfigure with
```
./configure --enable-R-shlib=yes
make
```
But I got the error
```
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: *** [libR.so] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/lib/R-3.1.2/src/main'
make[2]: *** [R] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/lib/R-3.1.2/src/main'
make[1]: *** [R] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/lib/R-3.1.2/src'
make: *** [R] Error 1
```
When searching stack overflow, I found an answer here: How to configure R-3.0.1 with --enable-R-shlib that suggested that the problem was that I was trying to compile in a directory that I had previously compiled without the "--enable-R-shlib" option

I tried to fix the problem by using the commands
```
make uninstall
```
which gives no errors by many "Nothing to be done for `uninstall'." statements, but it did successfully uninstall R
```
./configure --enable-R-shlib=yes
```
which gives the error
```
config.status: error: cannot find input file: `src/library/base/DESCRIPTION.in'
```
then
```
make
```
which gives the same error as when I tried to make before.

Can you help me see where I have gone wrong?
- Gavin Simpson over 9 years
  
  make uninstall only undoes the make install step, which generally copies the files from the compilation dir to dir(s) on the system as appropriate, and puts binaries in say /usr/bin so they are on the path. If you wanted to clean up the dir where you did a previous compile, use make clean (or make distclean, I forget what the difference is now as far as R is concerned). You also, in general, don't want to be building in the dir which contains the R sources (which ./configure suggests you are doing).