Installation Error: Could not find tools necessary to compile a package

[JiaxiangBU]

Here is the error message from my friend @XuliangSUFE, he is not fimilar with GitHub, so I help him open an issue.

8. stop("Could not find tools necessary to compile a package", call. = FALSE) 
7. check_build_tools(debug = debug) 
6. pkgbuild::local_build_tools(required = TRUE) 
5. install(source, dependencies = dependencies, upgrade = upgrade, force = force, quiet = quiet, build = build, build_opts = build_opts, repos = repos, type = type, ...) 
4. FUN(X[[i]], ...) 
3. vapply(remotes, install_remote, ..., FUN.VALUE = character(1)) 
2. install_remotes(remotes, auth_token = auth_token, host = host, dependencies = dependencies, upgrade = upgrade, force = force, quiet = quiet, build = build, build_opts = build_opts, repos = repos, type = type, ...) 
1. install_github("ropensci/writexl")

And the session information is here.

R version 3.6.0 (2019-04-26)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows >= 8 x64 (build 9200)

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=Chinese (Simplified)_China.936 
[2] LC_CTYPE=Chinese (Simplified)_China.936   
[3] LC_MONETARY=Chinese (Simplified)_China.936
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                              
[5] LC_TIME=Chinese (Simplified)_China.936    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] readxl_1.3.1    forcats_0.4.0   stringr_1.4.0   dplyr_0.8.0.1  
 [5] purrr_0.3.2     readr_1.3.1     tidyr_0.8.3     tibble_2.1.1   
 [9] ggplot2_3.1.1   tidyverse_1.2.1 rio_0.5.16      usethis_1.5.0  
[13] devtools_2.0.2 
loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_1.0.1        lubridate_1.7.4   here_0.1          lattice_0.20-38  
 [5] prettyunits_1.0.2 ps_1.3.0          assertthat_0.2.1  rprojroot_1.3-2  
 [9] digest_0.6.18     R6_2.4.0          cellranger_1.1.0  plyr_1.8.4       
[13] backports_1.1.4   evaluate_0.13     httr_1.4.0        pillar_1.3.1     
[17] rlang_0.3.4       lazyeval_0.2.2    curl_3.3          rstudioapi_0.10  
[21] data.table_1.12.2 callr_3.2.0       rmarkdown_1.12    desc_1.2.0       
[25] foreign_0.8-71    munsell_0.5.0     broom_0.5.2       compiler_3.6.0   
[29] modelr_0.1.4      xfun_0.6          base64enc_0.1-3   pkgconfig_2.0.2  
[33] pkgbuild_1.0.3    htmltools_0.3.6   tidyselect_0.2.5  crayon_1.3.4     
[37] withr_2.1.2       grid_3.6.0        nlme_3.1-139      jsonlite_1.6     
[41] gtable_0.3.0      magrittr_1.5      scales_1.0.0      zip_2.0.1        
[45] cli_1.1.0         stringi_1.4.3     fs_1.3.0          remotes_2.0.4    
[49] xml2_1.2.0        generics_0.0.2    openxlsx_4.1.0    tools_3.6.0      
[53] glue_1.3.1        hms_0.4.2         yaml_2.2.0        processx_3.3.0   
[57] pkgload_1.0.2     colorspace_1.4-1  sessioninfo_1.1.1 rvest_0.3.3      
[61] memoise_1.1.0     knitr_1.22        haven_2.1.0   

I am not sure whether the error happens from writexl or pkgbuild?

[turgeonmaxime]

Has your friend @XuliangSUFE tried installing from CRAN?

install.packages("writexl")

Unless you have a good reason to install the development version on Github, the version on CRAN should be fine.

When installing from Github, you need to install from source, which in the case of writexl means you'll have to compile C code. The error message is triggered because pkgbuild cannot find the necessary tools and compiler.

[JiaxiangBU]

@turgeonmaxime thanks for your reply. I will tell him to install it from CRAN.

[JiaxiangBU]

@XuliangSUFE try to install by the @turgeonmaxime suggestion, and tell me what is going on?

install.packages("writexl")