Trouble with installing under FreeBSD...

[jszhao]

When I tried to install RcppArmadillo, I got the following error message:

* installing *source* package 'RcppArmadillo' ...
** package 'RcppArmadillo' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
./configure: not found
ERROR: configuration failed for package 'RcppArmadillo'
* removing '/usr/local/lib/R/library/RcppArmadillo'

I don't know how to solve this problem.

Any help will be appreciated.

[eddelbuettel]

The configure script has #!/bin/bash.

Download the tarball, adjust accordingly (ie pick a different shell, or install bash, or whatever) and then install from the updated sources.

I'd recommend having #!/bin/bash. We're hardly the only ones using that.

[jszhao]

Thanks. I have downloaded the source code and change the #!/bin/bash in configure to #!/usr/local/bin/bash, and then it works.

[eddelbuettel]

Nice. I had a look at the script, and I do use some bashisms there so it would be a pain to change.

One intermediate step would be #!/usr/bin/env bash (using the env foo trick common with Python). Can you check if that works too? I could make that change, it should work on all systems where bash is native anyway and also on those like yours where it needs to be added.

[jszhao]

Thanks a lot for pointing to #!/usr/bin/env bash trick. I have checked that, and it works like a charm.

[eddelbuettel]

I'll make the change, and keep it in mind. Sorry to be enforcing bash on you, but it is a pretty common shell out here (though the *BSDs and other have their own of course).

[jszhao]

There is another way, that is to a symbolic link named /bin/bash and
point it to /usr/local/bin/bash

ln -s /usr/local/bin/bash /bin/bash

On FreeBSD, bash could be installed as a package.

[eddelbuettel]

Yes, of course, but you have to do that. I cannot rely on it being present. Had you done that before you would not have noticed this.

(And I'd do it, as much as I hate messing with system directories which your package installer owns.)

[jszhao]

Thank you for making the change. Frankly, I also hate to add symbolic to /bin/.