Installing rgl package under Ubuntu

| It seems that the r-base-dev package from the Ubuntu R backport doesn't
| provide *all* the packages necessary to build add-on libraries.

Re-read and re-think what you wrote there: you expect the r-base-dev package
to provide _all_ possible dependencies for _all_ possible packages. The
Oracle of Delphi in a few lines of a meta file?

That obviously can't work.  r-base-dev tries to give you all you need to
compile the _most common_ packages by providing essentially what R itself
needs.  Specialised packages that use other, more arcane libraries and
headers such as OpenGL are obviously not included.

Lastly, I can only urge users of Debian and Ubuntu to remember that because
we have _native_ packages on Debian and Ubuntu, we also have _native_
Build-Depends information.  Had you tried

	$ sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rgl

you might have gotten to the finish line much quicker.

Regards, Dirk

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison