Installing ROracle (and the Oracle Instant Client?) on MacOS - r

Question

I'm trying to install ROracle. Since ROracle requires the Oracle OCI libraries, I downloaded these files from the Oracle website: instantclient-basic-macos.x64-12.2.0.1.0, instantclient-sdk-macos.x64-12.2.0.1.0.zip. I put those files in ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew and install them using homebrew.
brew install instantclient-basic
brew install instantclient-sdk
The Oracle website also mentioned the need to set some environment variables, so I put this in my .bashrc file:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-basiclite/12.2.0.1.0/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-basiclite/12.2.0.1.0/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
export NLS_LANG=UTF8
But trying to install ROracle in R leads to this:
> install.packages("ROracle")
Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 308252 bytes (301 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 301 KB
Warning in strptime(xx, f <- "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%OS", tz = tz) :
unknown timezone 'zone/tz/2017c.1.0/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles'
* installing *source* package ‘ROracle’ ...
** package ‘ROracle’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
configure: error: OCI libraries not found
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘ROracle’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-library/ROracle’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘ROracle’ had non-zero exit status
R says it can't find the OCI libraries. Oracle's documentation has so far proven non-existent or worthless in resolving this issue, but I found a comment on the internet that seemed promising. So I wrote this into my .bashrc and ran it:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-oci-lib=/usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-basic/12.2.0.1.0/lib --with-oci-inc=/usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-sdk/12.2.0.1.0/lib/sdk/include' ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz
With this result:
installing to /usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-library/ROracle/libs
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘ROracle’ in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...):
****unable to load shared object '/usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-
library/ROracle/libs/ROracle.so':
dlopen(/usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-library/ROracle/libs/ROracle.so, 6): Symbol
not found: _ons_recvthread_clone_sb
Referenced from: /usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-basic/12.2.0.1.0/lib/libons.dylib
Expected in: flat namespace
in /usr/local/Cellar/instantclient-basic/12.2.0.1.0/lib/libons.dylib
Error: loading failed
Execution halted
ERROR: loading failed
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/3.4/site-library/ROracle’
So there's something wrong with libons.dylib? What am I supposed to do with that information?

Answer 1

The Instant Client 12.2 for macOS was patched. Get it from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/intel-macsoft-096467.html and unzip it, for example into ~/instantclient_12_2
I was able to install ROracle on macOS with:
brew install R
Update rpath in the library (using the correct version number for R):
install_name_tool -add_rpath ~/instantclient_12_2 /usr/local/Cellar/r/3.4.3/lib/R/bin/exec/R
Run 'R' and then:
install.packages("DBI")
Download ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz from https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ROracle/index.html and install it:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-oci-lib=/Users/cjones/instantclient_12_2 --with-oci-inc=/Users/cjones/instantclient_12_2/sdk/include' ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz

Answer 2

A solution for that without -add_rpath can be found on Intall ROracle Package for Windows and Mac OS
I use R from Macports and I did:
cd /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib
sudo ln -s ~/Applications/instantclient/libclntsh.dylib.12.1
sudo ln -s ~/Applications/instantclient/libclntshcore.dylib.12.1
sudo ln -s libclntsh.dylib.12.1 libclntsh.dylib
sudo ln -s libclntshcore.dylib.12.1 libclntshcore.dylib
I think only the link to libclntsh.dylib.12.1' is needed. But it does not harm to create the others as well. This way you do not need to runinstall_name_tool` after every upgrade to R.
After creating the links I was able to install ROracle using R CMD INSTALL