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I try to install the devtool package with the command

install.packages('devtools')

I get the following output:

ERROR: dependency âxml2â is not available for package ârversionsâ
* removing â/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/rversionsâ
ERROR: dependency ârversionsâ is not available for package âdevtoolsâ
* removing â/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/devtoolsâ

The downloaded source packages are in
    â/tmp/RtmprD4FpZ/downloaded_packagesâ
Warning messages:
1: In install.packages("devtools") :
 installation of package ârversionsâ had non-zero exit status
2: In install.packages("devtools") :
 installation of package âdevtoolsâ had non-zero exit status

How can I add these missing dependencies? Or what am I doing wrong?

My platform / version details:

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25) -- "Frisbee Sailing"
Copyright (C) 2013 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
D. Müller
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1 Answers1

3

Look at the error messages (and I edit the UTF-8 away here):

ERROR: dependency xml2 is not available for package rversions

ERROR: dependency rversions is not available for package devtools

and check the respective CRAN pages for rversions and xml2 to see that the latter has

Depends: R (≥ 3.1.0)

whereas you have

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)

So in short: either upgrade R to a current versions, or stick with the (outdated) support packages that match your (outdated) R version.

Community
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Dirk Eddelbuettel
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  • I just found out how to upgrade my R installation on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10476713/how-to-upgrade-r-in-ubuntu. Now I'm on R version 3.2.3 BUT I get the same error again when calling install.packages('devtools'). Can you help me? I'm new to R... – D. Müller Jan 07 '16 at 13:30
  • Please subscribe to and post on the r-sig-debian list. We need more detail _as all this works for all of us_ on Debian and Ubuntu. – Dirk Eddelbuettel Jan 07 '16 at 13:34
  • That page is outdated. Just read the [README itself](http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu). – Dirk Eddelbuettel Jan 07 '16 at 13:35