Problems installing R package "devtools" on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) - r

Question

I installed RStudio and R on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) Linux:
user#machine:~/.Rlibs$ R --version
R version 3.3.1 (2016-06-21) -- "Bug in Your Hair"
Copyright (C) 2016 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
My problem is that I am not able to install package "devtools". I get a series of errors and all my attempts to install required dependencies failed so far. It seems that packages cannot be found even though they are installed.
I would be really grateful for any help!
The errors occur when trying to install the "devtools" package in RStudio or using the R console:
install.packages("devtools")
These are the errors I am getting (leaving out the download output):
* installing *source* package ‘mime’ ...
** package ‘mime’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c rawmatch.c -o rawmatch.o
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-fstack-protector-strong’
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-Wdate-time’
/usr/lib/R/etc/Makeconf:132: recipe for target 'rawmatch.o' failed
make: *** [rawmatch.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘mime’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/mime’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘mime’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘curl’ ...
** package ‘curl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
Found pkg-config cflags and libs!
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
* deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
* rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
* csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.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: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/curl’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘curl’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘openssl’ ...
** package ‘openssl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
Found pkg-config cflags and libs!
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lssl -lcrypto
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because openssl was not found. Try installing:
* deb: libssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
* rpm: openssl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
* csw: libssl_dev (Solaris)
* brew: openssl (Mac OSX)
If openssl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a openssl.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: configuration failed for package ‘openssl’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/openssl’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘openssl’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘digest’ ...
** package ‘digest’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c aes.c -o aes.o
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-fstack-protector-strong’
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-Wdate-time’
/usr/lib/R/etc/Makeconf:132: recipe for target 'aes.o' failed
make: *** [aes.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘digest’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/digest’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘digest’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘jsonlite’ ...
** package ‘jsonlite’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
gcc -std=gnu99 -I/usr/share/R/include -DNDEBUG -Iyajl/api -fpic -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -g -c base64.c -o base64.o
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-fstack-protector-strong’
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-Wdate-time’
/usr/lib/R/etc/Makeconf:132: recipe for target 'base64.o' failed
make: *** [base64.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘jsonlite’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/jsonlite’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘jsonlite’ had non-zero exit status
* installing *source* package ‘git2r’ ...
** package ‘git2r’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables...
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking for library containing inflate... no
configure: error: in `/tmp/RtmpMyvGHt/R.INSTALL4c4a1e9555fc/git2r':
configure: error:
---------------------------------------------
The zlib library that is required to build
git2r was not found.
Please install:
zlib1g-dev (package on e.g. Debian and Ubuntu)
zlib-devel (package on e.g. Fedora, CentOS and RHEL)
and try again.
If the zlib library is installed on your
system but the git2r configuration is
unable to find it, you can specify the
include and lib path to zlib with:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-zlib-include=INCLUDE_PATH --with-zlib-lib=LIB_PATH' git2r
---------------------------------------------
See `config.log' for more details
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘git2r’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/git2r’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘git2r’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependencies ‘jsonlite’, ‘mime’, ‘curl’, ‘openssl’ are not available for package ‘httr’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/httr’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘httr’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependency ‘digest’ is not available for package ‘memoise’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/memoise’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘memoise’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependencies ‘httr’, ‘memoise’, ‘digest’, ‘jsonlite’, ‘git2r’ are not available for package ‘devtools’
* removing ‘/home/user/.Rlibs/devtools’
Warning in install.packages :
installation of package ‘devtools’ had non-zero exit status

Answer 1

I noticed the following error:
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-fstack-protector-strong’
gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-Wdate-time’
I experienced the same issue when I wanted to use an outdated version of gcc (specifically, 4.8) to resolve some compatibility issues in one of my projects. The compiler flags "-Wdate-time" and "-fstack-protector-strong" are not available in older gcc releases. A similar flag "-fstack-protector-all" is available in some older gcc releases though.
To wrap up, this error messages is due to the fact that the developers expected an up-to-date gcc and used compiler flags for that up-to-date gcc version, but the gcc installed in your system was outdated.
Hope that helps other who might run into this issue in the future.