GLPK: No such file or directory error when trying to install R package

Question

I am trying to install sparkTable in R 3.1.0 which depends on Rglpk. I manually installed GPLK on the system and added the libs folder to LD_

Answer 1

In ubuntu 14.04, all above doesn't work. the following however works, without the need of installing libglpk-dev using apt-get.

download the glpk package from gnu and extract it:

wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/glpk/glpk-4.55.tar.gz tar xvf glpk-4.55.tar.gz

make a GLPK directory in your local path:

mkdir ~/GLPK

configure within glpk:

cd glpk-4.55 ./configure --prefix=$HOME/GLPK cd .. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/GLPK/lib export LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/GLPK/lib export CPATH=$HOME/GLPK/include

download the Rglpk package from cran and extract it:

wget http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Rglpk_0.6-0.tar.gz tar xvf Rglpk_0.6_0.tar.gz

move the glpk directory into Rglpk/src and rename it to GLPK:

mv glpk-4.55 Rglpk/src/GLPK

now you can install:

R CMD INSTALL Rglpk

---

now a bit of explanation of what's going on. The "src/Makevars.in" file in the Rglpk package contains a line of code to enter a non-existing directory 'GLPK' within the src/ folder:

(line 11 of Makevars.in)

GLPK.ts: @(cd GLPK && make) touch $@

this is where the problem arises. obviously the code is trying to build glpk within that directory for some unknown reasons. and the solution above is achieved simply by moving the downloaded (and configured) glpk directory there...