installing Rcmdr

-----Original Message-----
From: Ista Zahn [mailto:istazahn at gmail.com]
Sent: February-15-09 11:03 AM
To: John Fox
Cc: G. Jay Kerns; bob at statland.org; R-sig-teaching
Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] installing Rcmdr

Hi John,
Yes, please feel free to use my suggestions in any way you wish, with
any modifications you want. The procedure is designed to be sufficient
rather than necessary, and you are correct that some of the steps can
be omitted.

-Ista
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:01 AM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote:

Dear Jay, Bob, Ista,

I, too, have installed Rcmdr on Ubuntu systems several times with no
problems. I suspect that r-base-dev wasn't installed and that Ista's
procedure will produce the desired result.

Ista: Do you mind if I add your procedure, slightly edited and with

to the Rcmdr installation page? Step 6, however, shouldn't be necessary
after installing with dep=TRUE, nor, I think, should step 3, since

only R code in the Rcmdr package.

Regards,
 John

-----Original Message-----
From: r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-project.org

[mailto:r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-

project.org] On Behalf Of Ista Zahn
Sent: February-14-09 11:12 PM
To: bob at statland.org
Cc: R-sig-teaching
Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] installing Rcmdr

I've found the version of R in the Ubuntu repository is almost always
out of date. Here is the process I follow:

1) Add the R repository (see

2) Install R and the dev package: sudo apt-get install r-base

3) Install any packages needed to build a particular package. In this
case something like sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rcmdr (I'm not on my
ubuntu machine at the moment so I'm not sure the package name is
correct).
4) Start R from the command line as root so I can install packages
system-wide: sudo R
5) From the R command prompt, install Rcmdr: >
install.packages("Rcmdr", dep=TRUE)
6) Start Rcmdr and install additional packages when prompted.

I've never had this procedure fail to produce a working installation.

Hope it helps,
Ista

-----Original Message-----
From: r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-project.org

[mailto:r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-

project.org] On Behalf Of G. Jay Kerns
Sent: February-14-09 9:55 PM
To: bob at statland.org
Cc: R-sig-teaching
Subject: Re: [R-sig-teaching] installing Rcmdr

Dear Robert,


On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Robert W. Hayden <hayden at mv.mv.com>

wrote:

Last weekend I visited my sister and her husband and installed R on
their Ubuntu 8.04 machine and tried to add Rcmdr.  I had endless
trouble most of which seemed to be because R (or Rcmdr) seemed to

a Fortran compiler (or a Fortran-to-C translator).  A smaller number
of error mesages (out of many pages thereof) were removed by
installing what appeared to be a library of Fortran linear algebra
routines (lblas?).  Even then Rcmdr complained about missing packages
when I ran it, and though it offered to install them, the

failed in every case, with no useful error messages.

I have installed R and Rcmdr many times before to Windows and various
Linux distributions (it's on this Debian right now)  and never had so
much trouble.  Did I do something wrong?  Is there a problem with R

Ubuntu?  I have programmed in Fortran so I don't mind adding a
compiler and I've taught linear algebra so I don't mind adding linear
algebra routines, but there is no way my students would ever figure
out that was needed.  I also noted that Rcmdr had a MUCH longer list
of dependencies than I remember.  All of this has me worried about
using R in an introductory course for folks who are not computer
science majors.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem?  I used whatever version of
R is in the Ubuntu repository.  I seem to remember 2.4 though that
seems a bit old.

------->  First-time AP Stats. teacher?  Help is on the way! See

 Robert W. Hayden in the old library at  212 Main Street (P. O. Box

 North Troy, VT 05859  phone (802) 988-2587  web site

http://statland.org/

 email  bob statland.org  (add your own "@" and save me some spam)

I am and have been using Rcmdr on Ubuntu 7.10, 8.04, and currently on
8.10.  I used 32 bit Ubuntu for 7.10 and 8.04, but on 8.10 I am using
both 32 and 64 bit versions. For the record, I have had no problems
whatsoever installing Rcmdr.

First thought (and you didn't mention): are you sure that you have the
r-base-dev Ubuntu package installed?  If you do not have that
installed, then you won't be able to build _anything_.

If you already have r-base-dev....? it is good practice to install the
packages from the repository with Synaptic (which it sounds like is
what you did), since in those cases, dependencies are marked
automatically for installation most of the time.    Another thing that
you could try is to right-click on packages in Synaptic - it gives
other packages "suggested" for installation.  In some cases,
installing these extra packages helped me with installation problems
elsewhere, too.

And you could consider contacting John Fox directly.  He's great about
responding quickly, thoughtfully, and accurately.

Good luck.
Jay









***************************************************
G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555-0002 USA
Office: 1035 Cushwa Hall
Phone: (330) 941-3310 Office (voice mail)
-3302 Department
-3170 FAX
E-mail: gkerns at ysu.edu
http://www.cc.ysu.edu/~gjkerns/