Installing nloptr on Linux - fatal error: nlopt.h: No such file or directory

Question

Another cry for help with installing nloptr package on Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS). I looked through many questions but did not manage to find a solution for this.

I am unable to install lme4 package in R (version 3.3.1/Rstudio Version 0.99.902) as the installation of nloptr has non-zero exit status. When I try

    install.package("nloptr") 

I get the following:

Installing package into ‘/home/rd14/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/nloptr_1.0.4.tar.gz'
Content type 'unknown' length 353942 bytes (345 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 345 KB

* installing *source* package ‘nloptr’ ...
** package ‘nloptr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking for g++... g++
checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes
checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... g++ -E
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... (cached) yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for pkg-config... yes
configure: Now testing for NLopt header file.
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking nlopt.h usability... no
checking nlopt.h presence... no
checking for nlopt.h... no
configure: Need to download and build NLopt
trying URL 'http://ab-initio.mit.edu/nlopt/nlopt-2.4.2.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 2361992 bytes (2.3 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 2.3 MB

configure: Starting to install library to /tmp/Rtmp7A1ldT/R.INSTALL66fffc391ed/nloptr/nlopt-2.4.2
configure: Done installing library to /tmp/Rtmp7A1ldT/R.INSTALL66fffc391ed/nloptr/nlopt-2.4.2
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating src/Makevars
** libs
g++ -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG      -fpic  -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g  -c dummy.cpp -o dummy.o
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG     -I/tmp/Rtmp7A1ldT/R.INSTALL66fffc391ed/nloptr/nlopt-2.4.2/include -fpic  -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g  -c nloptr.c -o nloptr.o
nloptr.c:42:19: fatal error: nlopt.h: No such file or directory
 #include "nlopt.h"
                   ^
compilation terminated.
make: *** [nloptr.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘nloptr’
* removing ‘/home/rd14/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3/nloptr’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘nloptr’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/tmp/Rtmp4Y3TXJ/downloaded_packages’

Your help will be much appreciated! Thank you.

Answer 1

When Jelmer and I built this setup it just worked on my Ubuntu machines, and continues to do so--either with the download and build of nlopt, or via the system library.

As you are on Ubuntu, the easiest fix for you is probably to just install the system nlopt library, which the nloptr package will detect and use. So do

sudo apt-get install libnlopt-dev 

and then try installing nlopt again.

Similarly, you should be able to get lme4 as r-cran-lme4 from the appropriate PPAs by Michael Rutter as described in the README for Ubuntu at CRAN.