Failed building wheel for rpy2

Question

I'm running Python v2.7.8 and R v3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing" on my elementary OS Freya 64 bit (based on Ubuntu 14.04).

I'm trying to install the rpy2 package with:

pip install rpy2

and it fails with the error:

Failed building wheel for rpy2

Down below I also see:

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

The full output is here.

I've already tried:

sudo apt-get install python-dev libevent-dev python3-dev

but the error remains.

I know pip works because I've already installed numpy, matplotlib, scipy, and other packages using it.

Answer 1

Found the answer in this post. I just had to upgrade R from v3.0.2 to the latest version available for my system (v3.2.1).

Step 1: Uninstall Previous R-base installation

sudo apt-get remove r-base-core

Step 2: Update Sources.List File

1. Edit the sources.list file

   sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
   

2. Add following entry (for Ubuntu 14.04):

   deb http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/
   

Step 3: Add the Public Keys

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

Step 4: Install R-base

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install r-base

Step5: install rpy2

pip install rpy2