rgl install for R 3.7

I?ve installed R 3.7.0 on a new laptop running macos 10.14.5 and have managed to get most of my usual packages

I presume 'R 3.7.0' is R-devel: it is not released and may never be 
released under that version.

to compile from source with a ~/.R/Makevars file that looks like this:

CC=/usr/local/clang8/bin/clang
CXX=/usr/local/clang8/bin/clang++
LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/clang8/lib
CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/clang8/include -I/opt/X11/include/freetype2

I suspect you don't want the second: if you have pkg-config it should 
find include paths for you.

FC=/usr/local/gfortran/bin/gfortran
FLIBS=-L/usr/local/gfortran/lib -lgfortran

As usual, the last challenge seems to be to get rgl installed.  Compilation _seems_ to go
smoothly, but I now see:


Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...) :
   unable to load shared object '/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.7/Resources/library/00LOCK-rgl/00new/rgl/libs/rgl.so':
   dlopen(/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.7/Resources/library/00LOCK-rgl/00new/rgl/libs/rgl.so, 6): Symbol not found: _FT_Attach_File
   Referenced from: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.7/Resources/library/00LOCK-rgl/00new/rgl/libs/rgl.so

Perhaps you should show the linking line.  A similar setup works for me:

configure: Darwin, so ensuring /opt/X11/bin is at the head of the PATH...
checking for pkg-config... yes
...

Do you have pkg-config (it is not a standard part of macOS, but is 
available on SU's site -- see the R-admin manual)?  You may need to set 
its path: for rgl I used

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig

(which should be the default) but for a few packages (Cairo gdtools rsvg)

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/X11/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig

/usr/local/clang8/bin/clang++ -std=gnu++11 -dynamiclib 
-Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names -undefined dynamic_lookup 
-single_module -multiply_defined suppress -L/Users/ripley/R/R-devel/lib 
-L/usr/local/clang8/lib -L/usr/local/lib -o rgl.so ABCLineSet.o 
BBoxDeco.o Background.o ClipPlane.o Color.o Disposable.o Light.o 
LineSet.o LineStripSet.o Material.o NULLgui.o PlaneSet.o PointSet.o 
PrimitiveSet.o RenderContext.o Shape.o SphereMesh.o SphereSet.o 
SpriteSet.o String.o Surface.o TextSet.o Texture.o Viewpoint.o api.o 
assert.o callbacks.o device.o devicemanager.o fps.o ftgl.o geom.o 
gl2ps.o glErrors.o glgui.o gui.o init.o par3d.o pixmap.o platform.o 
pretty.o render.o rglmath.o rglview.o scene.o select.o subscene.o 
win32gui.o win32lib.o x11gui.o x11lib.o -lGLU -lGL -framework GLKit 
-framework OpenGL -dylib_file 
/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGL.dylib:/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libGL.dylib 
-L/usr/local/lib -lpng16 -L/usr/X11/lib -lX11 -L/usr/local/lib 
-lfreetype -L/Users/ripley/R/R-devel/lib -lR -Wl,-framework 
-Wl,CoreFoundation

so that is statically linking libfreetype from /usr/local/lib and 
installed from 
https://mac.r-project.org/libs/freetype-2.5.5-darwin.13-x86_64.tar.gz . 
And that provides a freetype2.pc file, so

% pkg-config freetype2 --cflags
-I/usr/local/include/freetype2 -I/usr/local/include/libpng16
% pkg-config freetype2 --libs
-L/usr/local/lib -lfreetype

There is a comment somewhat after this about rgl requiring XQuartz, but I have  XQuartz 2.7.11 so I don?t
think that this is the problem.  Apparently, there is still a freetype problem, however I?m out of my depth at this
point.   Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Roger Koenker
Honorary Professor
Department of Economics, UCL
London  WC1H 0AX.

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford