Devtools in R Installation

Software and Programming R
1

Hi,

So I am recently trying to instal ‘devtools’ in R to access an old package from cran which is no longer updated. I get an error saying:

Configuration failed because libxml-2.0 was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libxml2-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libxml2-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libxml2_dev (Solaris)
If libxml-2.0 is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libxml-2.0.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=...'

I’m sure libxml2 is already installed but the path is wrong. Any idea how to reset the path, or put the packages in my own section so R knows where to locate them? I tried installing via

brew install libxml2

but I don’t think I have access to do this.

2

See these package install notes: R package installation guide

3

Oh my bad I did not realise! Is there an installation which covers most? Looking at this thread it all seems pretty variable?

4

Yeah, it’s kinda variable. Depends on the system dependencies needed and how the package author(s) set up the configuration.