error installing RandForestGUI (hence 'rgl', 'X11) in "R version 2.13.1 (2011-07-08)"

I have installed "R version 2.13.1 (2011-07-08)", over "Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid Lynx". (I use RStudio 0.94.92), with all the headers needed to compile the many different packages I already installed. I got stuck with : install.packages("RandForestGUI"). Everything ran smoothly until

.....
* DONE (sciplot)
ERROR: dependency ‘rgl’ is not available for package ‘clusterSim’
* removing ‘/home/rs/R/i486-pc-l开发者_运维问答inux-gnu-library/2.13/clusterSim’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package 'clusterSim' had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘clusterSim’ is not available for package ‘RandForestGUI’
* removing ‘/home/rs/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13/RandForestGUI’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package 'RandForestGUI' had non-zero exit status

I tried to : install.packages("rgl") but

Installing package(s) into ‘/home/rs/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
provo con l'URL 'http://rm.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/CRAN/src/contrib/rgl_0.92.798.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 1677772 bytes (1.6 Mb)
URL aperto
==================================================
downloaded 1.6 Mb

* installing *source* package ‘rgl’ ...
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
….
checking for libpng-config... yes
configure: using libpng-config
configure: using libpng dynamic linkage
checking for X... no
configure: error: X11 not found but required, configure aborted.
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘rgl’
* removing ‘/home/rs/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13/rgl’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package 'rgl' had non-zero exit status

Finally I tried : install.packages("X11") and

Installing package(s) into ‘/home/rs/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.13’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  package ‘X11’ is not available (for R version 2.13.1)

... was stuck!.

Is it possible to have RandForestGUI in "R version 2.13.1 (2011-07-08)"? Many thanks, Roberto Scotti

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Couple of rerequisites:

• Use an R binary from the CRAN Ubuntu repository.
• Do sudo apt-get install r-base-dev to complement your R environment for local package installation if you haven't already done so.
• Then do sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl as that is the hardest one to OpenGL headers.

Now try again with the RForestGUI package and its other dependants, and analyse the errors package by package.

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The error indicates that you don't have the relevant X11 headers package for your OS. This is not an R package. You need to install that using whatever tools Ubuntu provides (as it is a Debian off-shoot, apt get should work, but there may be other, preferred techniques for adding packages to your OS.

The R Installation and Administration manual suggests that, for Debian, the relevant OS package needed is xorg-dev. Try installing that using your package manager in Ubuntu, and retry to install rgl inside R.

@Dirk Eddelbuettel will no doubt comment that there are pre-built packages in Ubuntu for many of R's packages or at least a meta-package for R Development that will make sure you have all the header packages for your OS available so you can build R packages at install time. I don't use Ubuntu or Debian so I cannot help with this aspect of your Q.

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Had a similar problem for the clusterSim package in OS X.

Found the solution on the rstudio board:

X11 isn't installed by default on newer versions of OS X, so I had to install Quartz (the osx distribution of X11)