How can I install devtools with Renv without getting an Error

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