error installing rpy2 on Mac

Question

I am trying to install rpy2 on python 2.7.14, on a Mac OS High Sierra version 10.13.2, but when I try writing the command

pip install rpy2

I get the following output:

Collecting rpy2
  Using cached rpy2-2.9.2.tar.gz
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    rpy2 is no longer supporting Python < 3. Consider using an older rpy2 release when using an older Python release.

    ----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 1 in /private/var/folders/11/xgl2d8l16wd8xv2_lmdtcmwc0000gn/T/pip-build-aJMHfU/rpy2/
You are using pip version 9.0.1, however version 9.0.3 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.

I have already tried to upgrade the pip package by typing

pip install --upgrade pip

but I get the following message:

Requirement already up-to-date: pip in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages
You are using pip version 9.0.1, however version 9.0.3 is available.
You should consider upgrading via the 'pip install --upgrade pip' command.

I was able to install rpy2 on python3, but for some reason it is not installing on python2.

Here are the specifications from my python2:

Python 2.7.14 (v2.7.14:84471935ed, Sep 16 2017, 12:01:12) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

Any help would be deeply appreciated!

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 22 '18 at 16:26

Version 2.8.6 was the last version of rpy2 which supported the 2.x series of Python.

You can tell pip to install that version specifically:

pip install rpy2==2.8.6

_{Why a package manager - whose entire purpose in life is to handle dependency management - is not able to successfully figure this out on its own, I have no clue.}

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 31 '18 at 07:19

It's stated that latest versions are only supported by python 3.

rpy2 is no longer supporting Python < 3. Consider using an older rpy2 release when using an older Python release.

If you really need to use python 2, try downloading the older version of rpy2 and build it from source.

error installing rpy2 on Mac

2 Answers2