How to get R to compile with PNG support
Thanks for your replies, Dirk and Matt.
On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
On 20 April 2011 at 12:16, Karl-Dieter Crisman wrote: | ++++ | | R is now configured for i686-pc-linux-gnu | ?Source directory: ? ? ? ? ?. | ?Installation directory: ? ?/home/sageserver/sage/local | ?C compiler: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?gcc -std=gnu99 | -I/home/sageserver/sage/local/include | -L/home/sageserver/sage/local/lib/ ? Fortran 77 compiler: | sage_fortran ?-g -O2 | ?C++ compiler: ? ? ? ? ? ? ?g++ ?-g -O2 | ?Fortran 90/95 compiler: ? ?sage_fortran -g -O2 ?Obj-C compiler: | ?Interfaces supported: ? ? ?X11 | ?External libraries: ? ? ? ?readline, BLAS(ATLAS), LAPACK(generic) | Additional capabilities: ? PNG, NLS | ?Options enabled: ? ? ? ? ? shared R library, R profiling | ?Recommended packages: ? ? ?yes | | | However: | | | > capabilities() | ? ?jpeg ? ? ?png ? ? tiff ? ?tcltk ? ? ?X11 ? ? aqua http/ftp ?sockets | ? FALSE ? ?FALSE ? ?FALSE ? ?FALSE ? ?FALSE ? ?FALSE ? ? TRUE ? ? TRUE | | ?libxml ? ? fifo ? cledit ? ?iconv ? ? ?NLS ?profmem ? ?cairo | ? ?TRUE ? ? TRUE ? ? TRUE ? ? TRUE ? ? TRUE ? ?FALSE ? ?FALSE Random guess: did you connect via ssh without x11 forwarding?
Almost certainly, yes. (I am an interlocutor right now for someone who is actually doing this, my apologies.) But it's a machine we just ssh into, I'm pretty sure, though it does serve up web pages.
I cannot see how configure find png.h and libpng but the binary fails. As all other X11 related formats are also shown false, methinks you are without a valid DISPLAY.
That is quite likely. So it sounds like for png() to be set to use the X11 device, there has to (somewhere) be a visual output - presumably that is the part LOGICAL(ans)[i++] = X11; in Matt's answer.
That is actually an issue related to your headless use---which is what Sage may default too; see the R FAQ on this and the prior discussion on the xvfb-run wrapper which 'simulates' an x11 environment (which you need for png). ?So maybe you should revisit the Cairo devices---they allow you plotting without an x11 device (and also give you SVG).
Yeah, and I saw your SO answer on this (after the fact) as well. In some sense, we are just trying to get graphics on one machine. Note that we have installed the cairo devel package on this very machine, but it's not being picked up - maybe it's looking in the wrong place? That is one of the reasons this is confusing. But in a larger sense, because of Sage's "batteries included" philosophy (which we know not everyone agrees with!), we would like to have a one-shot way so that *everyone* will see R graphics, not just people whose binary happens to have been compiled on a machine that has X and a display. If that means adding 22.5 MB to our tarball for Cairo... maybe, maybe not. I won't copy Matt's message here, but I appreciate the pointers to exactly where these things are defined very much - without knowing where to look, it would be a long slog. Hopefully we'll have some success! Thanks for the replies, and for any other ideas. Karl-Dieter