Trying to install Rattle for R on my Mac - r

Question

I'm trying to install Rattle and have been running into some issues. Below is the initial code and results.
install.packages('rattle', repo='https://cran.cnr.Berkeley.edu/')
also installing the dependency ‘RGtk2’
Package which is only available in source form, and may need compilation of
C/C++/Fortran: ‘RGtk2’
Do you want to attempt to install these from sources?
I tried yes and the error it gave me is this
configure: error: GTK version 2.8.0 required
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RGtk2’
* removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/library/RGtk2’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘RGtk2’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘RGtk2’ is not available for package ‘rattle’
* removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/library/rattle’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘rattle’ had non-zero exit status
The downloaded source packages are in
‘/private/var/folders/47/39zt_y995czg2rgb3n485ty80000gn/T/Rtmpb8Eli0/downloaded_packages’
I also tried no and the error it gave me was this
ERROR: dependency ‘RGtk2’ is not available for package ‘rattle’
* removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.4/Resources/library/rattle’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘rattle’ had non-zero exit status
The downloaded source packages are in
‘/private/var/folders/47/39zt_y995czg2rgb3n485ty80000gn/T/Rtmpb8Eli0/downloaded_packages’
Would anybody happen to know where I'm going wrong? Thank you in advance for any input.

Answer 1

My reputation is too low to comment, so I must post an answer. Zhiya's method worked for some of my students. It was not working for everyone, so we worked out a second method (thanks, Tugay!!)
The wrapper method of GW also was not working, perhaps because since it was compiled some of the versions have changed. (My theory is that all of the following must have versions that can interoperate: R, RGtk+, GTK, MacOS, Rattle. When any of them is updated on my system, Rattle may stop working. That's why you got this message
configure: error: GTK version 2.8.0 required
My blog post documenting what worked for me is here. It works with: MacOS 10.13.4,R 3.4.4, Rattle 5.1.3, RGtk2 2.24.32. YMMV.
I am sure that if I knew some UNIX, I could have gotten other methods to work as well. Again, the apparent problem is that as of today there are not up-to-date versions of RGtk2 and GTK that are compiled for the latest MacOS. A suitable compiled version does exist for Windows and is in the CRAN repository. Solving the error messages requires compiling the missing programs from their source code versions on CRAN.