R-devel no longer supports Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (insufficient PCRE version)

| Since yesterday's r69662, R no longer ./configure[s] on a standard
| Ubuntu 14.04.3 installation, which ships with PCRE 8.31
| (http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty-updates/libpcre3-dev)
| 
| I get:
| 
| > checking if PCRE version >= 8.32, < 10.0 and has UTF-8 support... no
| > checking whether PCRE support suffices... configure: error: pcre library and headers are required
| 
| Are there any workarounds for this except for manually compiling and
| installing a more recent version of PCRE from source?

The technical term is 'backport'. You could try and see if someone has taken
the (Debian or Ubuntu) source package for pcre (current, ie >= 8.32) and
created a package on launchpad.net in a PPA.

Otherwise it is pretty easy to do yourself ... and if you just wait a little
Michael will have to do it anyway to get R 3.3 built for 14.04.

(I was just bitten yesterday by R 3.2.2 re-built for Ubuntu 12.04 [ as used
by Travis ] not having libcurl capabilities. But that may well be a more
involved library than pcre so I left it at that.)

Dirk

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org

I think you have it backwards: Ubuntu 14.04 does not support R-devel ....

PCRE 8.32 is 3 years old, so Ubuntu 14.04 shipped an already quite old 
version 19 months ago.

R has long said that its requirement was

    PCRE (version 8.10 or later, preferably 8.32 or later)

and 8.32 is indeed preferable: the aim is that all the current PCRE 
regex syntax be usable on all platforms.

Given that you appear to be installing R from the sources, PCRE is no 
more difficult to install from source ....

R-devel is 'under development' and months off release: if this proves to 
be too restrictive we can postpone the aim to 3.4.x.

Since yesterday's r69662, R no longer ./configure[s] on a standard
Ubuntu 14.04.3 installation, which ships with PCRE 8.31
(http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty-updates/libpcre3-dev)

I get:

checking if PCRE version >= 8.32, < 10.0 and has UTF-8 support... no
checking whether PCRE support suffices... configure: error: pcre library and headers are required

Are there any workarounds for this except for manually compiling and
installing a more recent version of PCRE from source?

Thanks!

	Sebastian

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK

For the record ...

I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 too (probably until 16.04 comes out)

Paul

I think you have it backwards: Ubuntu 14.04 does not support R-devel ....

PCRE 8.32 is 3 years old, so Ubuntu 14.04 shipped an already quite old
version 19 months ago.

R has long said that its requirement was

    PCRE (version 8.10 or later, preferably 8.32 or later)

and 8.32 is indeed preferable: the aim is that all the current PCRE
regex syntax be usable on all platforms.

Given that you appear to be installing R from the sources, PCRE is no
more difficult to install from source ....

R-devel is 'under development' and months off release: if this proves to
be too restrictive we can postpone the aim to 3.4.x.


On 20/11/2015 15:14, Sebastian Meyer wrote:

Since yesterday's r69662, R no longer ./configure[s] on a standard
Ubuntu 14.04.3 installation, which ships with PCRE 8.31
(http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty-updates/libpcre3-dev)

I get:

checking if PCRE version >= 8.32, < 10.0 and has UTF-8 support... no
checking whether PCRE support suffices... configure: error: pcre
library and headers are required

Are there any workarounds for this except for manually compiling and
installing a more recent version of PCRE from source?

Thanks!

    Sebastian

Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/

Sebastian, Paul,

Ubuntu 14.04 builds (for Linux 32 and 64 bit, ie i386 and amd64) of the (most
current) pcre package (ie 8.35-7) for Ubuntu are now in my PPA at

   https://launchpad.net/~edd/+archive/ubuntu/misc/+packages

These should work.  You can add this PPA as I do in some Travis runs via

   sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:edd/misc

and then just do

   apt-get update; apt-get install libpcre3-dev

which should do the trick -- but I haven't tested.  Contact me off-list if
you fail.

Oh, and I guess we should have had this whole thread over on r-sig-debian.

Best,  Dirk

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org

Hi

For the record, Dirk (after a couple of false starts and admirable 
persistance!) has got this to work for me.

So on Ubuntu 14.04, adding Dirk's PPA, followed by apt-get update pulls 
down a backport for libpcre3.

Thanks Dirk!

Paul

Sebastian, Paul,

Ubuntu 14.04 builds (for Linux 32 and 64 bit, ie i386 and amd64) of the (most
current) pcre package (ie 8.35-7) for Ubuntu are now in my PPA at

    https://launchpad.net/~edd/+archive/ubuntu/misc/+packages

These should work.  You can add this PPA as I do in some Travis runs via

    sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:edd/misc

and then just do

    apt-get update; apt-get install libpcre3-dev

which should do the trick -- but I haven't tested.  Contact me off-list if
you fail.

Oh, and I guess we should have had this whole thread over on r-sig-debian.

Best,  Dirk

Dr Paul Murrell
Department of Statistics
The University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
64 9 3737599 x85392
paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/

| For the record, Dirk (after a couple of false starts and admirable 
| persistance!) has got this to work for me.

[ This was entirely due to
  a) Debian transitioning to g++-5 support and relabeling all (rebuilt) C++ 
     libraries with a suffix 'v5' and
  b) this affecting pcre as well and
  c) me being slopping at first not noticing in the core library package and
  d) moreover me not noticing two subordinate pcre packages from the same
     build
  all which lead to the package manager not wanting to upgrade -- which was
  entirely correct.  We got that sorted out.

  "Usually" such transitions are much simpler; pcre happens to create a bunch
  of subpackages. ]

| So on Ubuntu 14.04, adding Dirk's PPA, followed by apt-get update pulls 
| down a backport for libpcre3.

[ Said PPA is at

    https://launchpad.net/~edd/+archive/ubuntu/misc

  and you can install it via
  
    apt-get install python-software-properties 
    add-apt-repository -y "ppa:edd/misc"
    apt-get update
    apt-get install libpcre3-dev    

  which should do it. ]

| Thanks Dirk!

My pleasure!

Dirk
 
| Paul
|

| >
| > Sebastian, Paul,
| >
| > Ubuntu 14.04 builds (for Linux 32 and 64 bit, ie i386 and amd64) of the (most
| > current) pcre package (ie 8.35-7) for Ubuntu are now in my PPA at
| >
| >     https://launchpad.net/~edd/+archive/ubuntu/misc/+packages
| >
| > These should work.  You can add this PPA as I do in some Travis runs via
| >
| >     sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:edd/misc
| >
| > and then just do
| >
| >     apt-get update; apt-get install libpcre3-dev
| >
| > which should do the trick -- but I haven't tested.  Contact me off-list if
| > you fail.
| >
| > Oh, and I guess we should have had this whole thread over on r-sig-debian.
| >
| > Best,  Dirk
| >
| 
| -- 
| Dr Paul Murrell
| Department of Statistics
| The University of Auckland
| Private Bag 92019
| Auckland
| New Zealand
| 64 9 3737599 x85392
| paul at stat.auckland.ac.nz
| http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~paul/

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org