How can I install devtools with Renv without getting an Error - r

Question

Renv, can't install devtools
Goal: install devtools with renv
Expected Results: Installation of devtools.
Actual Results: see error below
I try to install packages in RStudio through renv (On Ubuntu), to use for my own package. I performed Renv init(), packages will install except for devtools. When I try to install devtools through renv::install()I get the following error:
> renv::install("devtools")
Retrieving 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/devtools_2.4.4.tar.gz' ...
OK [file is up to date]
Retrieving 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/pkgdown_2.0.6.tar.gz' ...
OK [file is up to date]
Retrieving 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/ragg_1.2.2.tar.gz' ...
OK [file is up to date]
Installing ragg [1.2.2] ...
FAILED
Error installing package 'ragg':
================================
* installing *source* package ‘ragg’ ...
** package ‘ragg’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
Package libtiff-4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libtiff-4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libtiff-4' found
Package libtiff-4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libtiff-4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libtiff-4' found
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lfreetype -lpng16 -ltiff -lz -ljpeg -lbz2
-----------------------------[ ANTICONF ]-------------------------------
Configuration failed to find one of freetype2 libpng libtiff-4. Try installing:
* deb: libfreetype6-dev libpng-dev libtiff5-dev libjpeg-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
* rpm: freetype-devel libpng-devel libtiff-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
* csw: libfreetype_dev libpng16_dev libtiff_dev libjpeg_dev (Solaris)
If freetype2 libpng libtiff-4 is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a freetype2 libpng libtiff-4.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=...'
-------------------------- [ERROR MESSAGE] ---------------------------
<stdin>:1:22: fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘ragg’
* removing ‘/home/SmitsG/Documents/Projects/{"package_location"}/renv/staging/1/ragg’
Error: install of package 'ragg' failed [error code 1]
So this resulted in the following errors:
No package 'libtiff-4' found
:1:22: fatal error: ft2build.h: No such file or directory
Error: install of package 'ragg' failed [error code 1]
I tried the following:
Installation in other package environment. This didn't work out
https://techoverflow.net/2019/06/11/how-to-fix-ft2build-h-no-such-file-or-directory/
Seems that I am missing the ft2build.h header file from
libfreetype. So I tried to install libfreetype from tar.gz and from
CRAN, for renv (this didn't install automatically). This didn't work out.
Package libtiff-4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libtiff-4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
I found this link: https://github.com/numworks/epsilon/issues/592 where the set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH. But I think this can only be done when libfreetype is installed through renv.
{:~/path_to_package}$ pkg-config --cflags freetype2-I/usr/include/freetype2
-I/usr/include/libpng16
{:~/path_to_package}$ pkg-config --libs --cflags libtiff-4Package libtiff-4 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `libtiff-4.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'libtiff-4' found

Answer 1

I am a newbie to linux and I have found that installing R packages can be very frustrating because (1) there are numerous linux dependencies that need to be installed first and (2) it takes forever. Below is a script that installs the dependencies that I have found in installing R on my system (Linux Mint 21 Vanessa).
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -q \
cargo \
cmake \
default-jdk \
fonts-roboto \
htop \
libcairo2-dev \
libclang-dev \
libcurl4-openssl-dev \
libfontconfig1-dev \
libfreetype6-dev \
libfribidi-dev \
libgdal-dev \
libgeos-dev \
libharfbuzz-dev \
libjpeg-dev \
libproj-dev \
libpng-dev \
libpq-dev \
libsodium-dev \
libssl-dev \
libtiff5-dev \
libudunits2-dev \
libx11-dev \
libxml2-dev \
openjdk-8-jdk \
openjdk-8-jre \
pandoc \
ttf-mscorefonts-installer \
xorg-dev