How do I install the R package rgl on Ubuntu 9.10, using R version 2.12.1?

Question

I\'m trying to install the R package rgl on Ubuntu 9.10. I\'m using R version 2.12.1.

I got the following error: \"configure: error: missing required header GL/gl.h\

Answer 1

In case any newbies like myself have the same or similar issues installing rgl, the following finally worked for me.

1) At the bash prompt:

sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-rgl

This fixes "missing required header GL/gl.h" issues (I still had one after installing libglu1-mesa-dev).

2) At the R prompt (I started R with 'sudo R' but that probably isn't required):

install.packages("rgl", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org")

which downloads, compiles, and installs the latest version.

I also tried sudo apt-get install r-cran-rgl at step 2), but whenever I tried library(rgl) within R it would complain with

Error: package ‘rgl’ was built before R 3.0.0: please re-install it

But rgl can be upgraded from this point using the update.packages() command in R. This might be preferable if you want apt-get to know it's installed, but I didn't really care since R provides it's own package-management tools.