Cannot install R with cairo - r

Question

I' am installing R from source:
cd R-3.2.2
./configure --prefix=$( pwd ) --with-cairo=yes --with-readline=no --with-libpng=yes --with-x=no
I already have cairo (v1.14.8) and pango (v1.40.6) installed from source (neither had any errors while installing). But R does not configure with cairo:
R is now configured for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Source directory: .
Installation directory: /athena/elementolab/scratch/chm2059/from_dat02/chm2059/lib/R-3.2.2
C compiler: gcc -std=gnu99 -I/athena/elementolab/scratch/chm2059/from_dat02/chm2059/lib/bzip2-1.0.6/include/packages/include
Fortran 77 compiler: gfortran -g -O2
C++ compiler: g++ -g -O2
C++ 11 compiler: g++ -std=c++11 -g -O2
Fortran 90/95 compiler: gfortran -g -O2
Obj-C compiler:
Interfaces supported:
External libraries: zlib, PCRE, curl
Additional capabilities: NLS
Options enabled: shared BLAS, R profiling
Capabilities skipped: PNG, JPEG, TIFF, cairo, ICU
Options not enabled: memory profiling
Recommended packages: yes
configure: WARNING: you cannot build info or HTML versions of the R manuals
configure: WARNING: you cannot build PDF versions of the R manuals
configure: WARNING: you cannot build PDF versions of vignettes and help pages
I see these lines while it configures:
checking for X... disabled
using X11 ... no
checking whether pkg-config knows about cairo and pango... yes
checking whether cairo including pango is >= 1.2 and works... no
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

I had the same problem in Why do Greek letters fail to render in R's (v4) PDF output? - this is how I fixed it for R 4.0.3:
Open the configure script, and find this:
$as_echo_n "checking whether cairo including pango is >= 1.2 and works... " >&6; }
if ${r_cv_cairo_works+:} false; then :
$as_echo_n "(cached) " >&6
else
cat confdefs.h - <<_ACEOF >conftest.$ac_ext
/* end confdefs.h. */
#include <pango/pango.h>
#include <pango/pangocairo.h>
#include <cairo-xlib.h>
#if CAIRO_VERSION < 10200
#error cairo version >= 1.2 required
#endif
int main(void) {
cairo_t *CC = NULL; // silence picky compilers
cairo_arc(CC, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 6.28);
pango_cairo_create_layout(CC);
pango_font_description_new();
return 0;
}
_ACEOF
Copy this core code part into some test.c file:
#include <pango/pango.h>
#include <pango/pangocairo.h>
#include <cairo-xlib.h>
#if CAIRO_VERSION < 10200
#error cairo version >= 1.2 required
#endif
int main(void) {
cairo_t *CC = NULL; // silence picky compilers
cairo_arc(CC, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 6.28);
pango_cairo_create_layout(CC);
pango_font_description_new();
return 0;
}
Then run cc test.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs pangocairo). This may give you some more information on why the configure test is failing. Also use
cc test.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs pangocairo) --verbose
and
cc test.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs pangocairo) -Wl,--verbose
to obtain even more information.
In my case, I finally got this after installing a few missing packages:
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-suse-linux/7/../../../../x86_64-suse-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lharfbuzz
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
The reason was a broken link in /usr/lib64:
Once that was repaired, everything worked: lacking root right, I used
mkdir ~/lib
cp /usr/lib64/libharfbuzz.so.0 ~/lib/libharfbuzz.so
export LIBRARY_PATH=~/lib
Then, cc test.c $(pkg-config --cflags --libs pangocairo) finished, and configuring with pango and cairo worked as well.