“pdflatex is not available” from “R CMD check”

On Jan 26, 2015, at 6:20 PM, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:
Hello:  

	  What should I do to diagnose and fix ?pdflatex is not available? from ?R CMD check? on a Mac running OS X 10.10.1 (see below for more details including sessionInfo.)?  

	  A blog on "Building R packages: missing path to pdflatex? (http://www.r-bloggers.com/building-r-packages-missing-path-to-pdflatex/ <http://www.r-bloggers.com/building-r-packages-missing-path-to-pdflatex/>) suggested the following:  

Sys.which("pdflatex?) 
That had fancy-quotes. When corrected I see:
Sys.which("pdflatex")
pdflatex 
"/usr/texbin/pdflatex"
# "" 
Sys.getenv("PATH")
# [1] "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin?

	  However, the suggested fix did not work for me.  

		    1.  How can I determine if pdflatex is installed?  

		    2.  If it is, how can I find it?  If it?s not, what i the recommended install procedure?  

	  Thanks 
	  Spencer Graves

##########

R CMD check ? 
...
* checking PDF version of manual ... WARNING
LaTeX errors when creating PDF version.
This typically indicates Rd problems.
* checking PDF version of manual without hyperrefs or index ... ERROR
Re-running with no redirection of stdout/stderr.
Hmm ... looks like a package
Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,  : 
pdflatex is not available
Error in texi2dvi(file = file, pdf = TRUE, clean = clean, quiet = quiet,  : 
pdflatex is not available
Error in running tools::texi2pdf()
You may want to clean up by 'rm -rf /var/folders/mh/mrm_14nx19g13lsnj9zmvwjr0000gn/T//RtmpjOTCtB/Rd2pdf1651fa89c1?

Spencer,

First question would be, have you installed MacTex, which includes all the required components?

If not, then visit:

 https://tug.org/mactex/

MacTex 2014 is the current version. There are also some Yosemite specific notes here:

 http://www.tug.org/mactex/yosemite.html

The package should modify your $PATH upon installation, so that it includes:

 /usr/texbin

and Sys.which("pdflatex") in the R console run from the OS X terminal should return:

Sys.which("pdflatex") 
             pdflatex 
"/usr/texbin/pdflatex" 

I would check:

 $PATH

and:

 which pdflatex
When I run that in a Terminal session I get (nothing) whereas I do have MacTex installed:

david-winsemiuss-mac-pro:~ davidwinsemius$ which pdflatex
david-winsemiuss-mac-pro:~ davidwinsemius$  ls /usr/texbin
T1Wrap			dvilj			gftopk			mktexpk			pooltype		texdiff
a2ping			dvilj2p			gftype			mktextfm		ppower4			texdirflatten
afm2afm			dvilj4			gsftopk			mllatex			ps2eps			texdoc
afm2pl			dvilj4l			hbf2gf			mltex			ps2frag			texdoctk

Snipped output....
from the OS X terminal (not in an R session), just to be sure that you don't get different results there, as compared to what you are getting in R. In theory, the OS X terminal should provide the definitive response, whereas running some applications/GUI's, may not pick up (inherit) the system path.

You can also check:

 ls /usr/texbin

which contains links to the actual installation in:

 ls /usr/local/texlive/2014/bin/x86_64-darwin

to see if MacTex 2014 has been installed (it should show a large number of files and links, including pdflatex). If you have a prior version, then the path would be:

 ls /usr/local/texlive/YYYY/...
The paths for Terminal sessions are different than for R sessions (and I'm the wrong person to ask why, or how to synchronize, or even whether they _should_ be synchronized.)

Regards,

Marc Schwartz

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David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA

“pdflatex is not available” from “R CMD check”

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