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I was trying to get R working with the Jupyter Notebook on my Windows machine. I followed the IRkernel tutorial. However, I can't install the GitHub repository, I always get the error

install_github("IRkernel/IRkernel") Downloading GitHub repo IRkernel/IRkernel@master Error: Git does not seem to be installed on your system.

The devtools package (2.0.1) is installed. install_github also works for example with install_github("StatsWithR/statsr") (Coursera package) (although the devtools package is not even loaded?).

Not sure how to deal with the problem, any ideas? Is my devtools package broken?

Update: Just performed a re-installation of R (deleted all packages): I still get the same error

user190080
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5 Answers5

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Thought I would chime in here. I had the exact same problem. I came across this post...https://github.com/IRkernel/IRkernel/issues/594 where Flying Sheep simply states to install git. So went to https://git-scm.com/ and downloaded and installed, then ran the instructions https://irkernel.github.io/installation/ and everything worked. Now using R in Jupyter Nb.

user10588193
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  • But isn't that extremely strange? Git itself is nowhere listed as a requirement, I thought that everything is piped though devtools aka install_github...?! – user190080 Oct 31 '18 at 21:36
  • Installed Git, it worked! Now I am stuck with the IRkernel::installspec(), did this work for you? – user190080 Nov 01 '18 at 12:36
  • had the same issue in RStudio on Windows 10. Downloading git indeed solved the issue. – Robvh Mar 06 '23 at 18:56
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Here a way to overcome this problem. I have installed IRkernel with anaconda in my mac (I guess is the same on Linux and Windows) I typed:

conda install -c r r-irkernel

Then I started started R from terminal by typing:

R

Finally, I have install the kernelspec to tell Jupyter about IRkernel, with the option user=FALSE for installation in the global environment:

IRkernel::installspec(user=FALSE)

Hope it helps!

paoloeusebi
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  • Did you experience the same error though? Did you also install: conda install -c r r-essentials? – user190080 Oct 31 '18 at 15:48
  • No I have experienced other issues. Did you have Git installed? – paoloeusebi Oct 31 '18 at 15:54
  • Actually the devtools package should provide everything necessary...that's at least what I've thought so far. It also works with other GitHub packages so it's a bit weird – user190080 Oct 31 '18 at 16:08
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I had the same problem on Windows 7 and found older versions of devtools package work out. I downloaded devtools_1.13.4.tar.gz（didn't test others） from https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/devtools/，and did as follows:

  1. install devtools_1.13.4.tar.gz from local:

    go into R, click on Packages (at the top of the R console), then click on "Install package(s) from local zip files" and install the devtools_1.13.4.tar.gz, an ERROR message shows which dependencies are in need, for me, the message was :

    ERROR: dependencies 'httr', 'memoise', 'whisker', 'digest', 'rstudioapi', 'jsonlite', 'git2r', 'withr' are not available for package 'devtools'.

  2. install these dependecies:

    install.packages(c('httr', 'memoise', 'whisker', 'digest', 'rstudioapi', 'jsonlite', 'git2r', 'withr'))
  3. reinstall devtools_1.13.4.tar.gz from local;

  4. execute:

    library('devtools')
install_github('IRkernel/IRkernel')
IRkernel::installspec()

If message shows up like:

Error in IRkernel::installspec():jupyter-client has to be installed but “jupyter kernelspec --version” exited with code 127.

run R.exe from within Anaconda prompt,and execute:

IRkernel::installspec()

and everything worked.

Vance
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i combined the two of the solutions given above and that worked for me , from R console none were working, now it is working so thanks to the two above contributors.

1- go in anaconda prompt and runconda install -c r r-irkernel

2- Now in anaconda prompt type R.exe

3- now run this command IRkernel::installspec()

and it worked`

Raj
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I suspect that the tutorial linked to by the OP has changed.

I get the same error when following the IRkernel installation instructions here, however:

install.packages(c('repr', 'IRdisplay', 'evaluate', 'crayon', 'pbdZMQ', 'devtools', 'uuid', 'digest'))
devtools::install_github('IRkernel/IRkernel')
IRkernel::installspec()

That's despite having Git installed.

Using the following works, though:

install.packages(c('repr', 'IRdisplay', 'evaluate', 'crayon', 'pbdZMQ', 'devtools', 'uuid', 'digest'))
install.packages('IRkernel')
IRkernel::installspec()

(Those are similar to the instructions that now feature on the tutorial linked to by the OP.)

philipnye
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