R/ RStudio - install devtools fails?

Question

I am trying to install devtools in my RStudio. But I get tons of errors:

* installing *source* package ‘curl’ ...
** package ‘curl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
Package libcurl was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libcurl.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libcurl' found
Package libcurl was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libcurl.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libcurl' found
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/curl’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘curl’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘openssl’ ...
** package ‘openssl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lssl -lcrypto
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because openssl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: openssl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libssl_dev (Solaris)
 * brew: [email protected] (Mac OSX)
If openssl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a openssl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘openssl’
* removing ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/openssl’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘openssl’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘git2r’ ...
** package ‘git2r’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking for gcc... gcc
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 gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking for library containing inflate... -lz
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for libssl... no
configure: WARNING: "pkg-config failed to find libssl."
checking for library containing EVP_EncryptInit... no
configure: error: in `/tmp/RtmpWzaIce/R.INSTALL67fa335a4d20/git2r':
configure: error: 
  ---------------------------------------------
   The OpenSSL library that is required to
   build git2r was not found.

   Please install:
     libssl-dev    (package on e.g. Debian and Ubuntu)
     openssl-devel (package on e.g. Fedora, CentOS and RHEL)
     openssl       (Homebrew package on OS X)
   and try again.

   If the OpenSSL library is installed on
   your system but the git2r configuration
   is unable to find it, you can specify
   the include and lib path to OpenSSL with:
   R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-libssl-include=INCLUDE_PATH --with-libssl-lib=LIB_PATH' git2r
  ---------------------------------------------
See `config.log' for more details
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘git2r’
* removing ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/git2r’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘git2r’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependencies ‘curl’, ‘openssl’ are not available for package ‘httr’
* removing ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/httr’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘httr’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependencies ‘httr’, ‘git2r’ are not available for package ‘devtools’
* removing ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/devtools’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘devtools’ had non-zero exit status

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

So I tried to install libcurl:

> install.packages("libcurl")
Installing package into ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  package ‘libcurl’ is not available (for R version 3.4.0)
> install.packages("curl")

I'm on Ubuntu 17.04. And R 3.4.

Any ideas how I can fix this?

Answer 1

The error messages may be a bit confusing, because RStudio is asking you to install libcurl and openssl libraries for your Linux OS; for those you actually need Ubuntu packages instead of R packages.

Open a command line terminal, and type

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev 

Once the installation of your Ubuntu packages is completed, try again and you'll be able to install the devtools R package

Answer 2

We can use

sudo apt-get install libssl-dev