Not able to install dplyr in R 3.2.1

Question

I am not able to install dplyr. I have the following answer after trying the installation

  There are binary versions available but the source versions are later:
          binary source needs_compilation
backports  1.0.3  1.1.4             FALSE
Rcpp      0.12.6  1.0.1              TRUE
tibble       1.1  2.1.1              TRUE
dplyr      0.5.0  0.8.1              TRUE

  Binaries will be installed
Packages which are only available in source form, and may need compilation of
  C/C++/Fortran: ‘utf8’ ‘vctrs’ ‘fansi’ ‘glue’ ‘rlang’ ‘tidyselect’
  These will not be installed
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 2651k  100 2651k    0     0   464k      0  0:00:05  0:00:05 --:--:--  529k
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  165k  100  165k    0     0   188k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  233k
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 3722k  100 3722k    0     0   613k      0  0:00:06  0:00:06 --:--:--  732k

The downloaded binary packages are in
    /var/folders/np/f2p1wtb97f9_b_y_x0m1s60w0000gn/T//Rtmpm572i3/downloaded_packages
installing the source packages ‘backports’, ‘pillar’

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 13859  100 13859    0     0  37534      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 70350
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100  223k  100  223k    0     0   202k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:--  242k
* installing *source* package ‘backports’ ...
** package ‘backports’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** libs
sh: make: command not found
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘backports’
* removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library/backports’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘backports’ had non-zero exit status
ERROR: dependencies ‘fansi’, ‘rlang’, ‘utf8’, ‘vctrs’ are not available for package ‘pillar’
* removing ‘/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.2/Resources/library/pillar’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘pillar’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/private/var/folders/np/f2p1wtb97f9_b_y_x0m1s60w0000gn/T/Rtmpm572i3/downloaded_packages’

My session info:

R version 3.2.1 (2015-06-18)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion)

locale:
[1] es_ES.UTF-8/es_ES.UTF-8/es_ES.UTF-8/C/es_ES.UTF-8/es_ES.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] remotes_2.0.4

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] httr_1.4.0     R6_2.4.0       tools_3.2.1    RCurl_1.95-4.8 digest_0.6.10  bitops_1.0-6

Any reason why you can't update R? You're using a version that's 4 years old. — camille, May 28 '19 at 22:07
Maybe related to why they are using an OS version that hasn't been updated in three years and was released initially like 6 years ago. — joran, May 28 '19 at 22:10
Further, *"sh: make: command not found"* does not bode well for a development environment intended to compile things. (https://stackoverflow.com/a/14671022) — r2evans, May 28 '19 at 22:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 28 '19 at 22:47

Snark aside, this is going to be hard. As suggested by comments, if it's at all possible your easiest route will be to update your version of R to something current or nearly current.

It's theoretically possible to compile/install R and packages for older versions of R/on very old OS's, but in practice it gets hard pretty quickly. Your best bet is to see if you can install development tools from here (this may be a little hard as the information isn't always applicable/kept current for old OS versions).

R version is probably a bigger barrier than the OS; CRAN provides binaries for OS >= 10.6. However:

binaries are not provided for older versions of R
new packages may explicitly depend on newer versions of R.

Without access to development tools you could try to use the snapshot package to use the MRAN "time machine" (mirrors of previous instances of CRAN) - it goes back to September 2014. However, this will not pick up binaries for any packages that were first released after your version of R was current, which includes most of the tidyverse packages you're trying to install ...

Not able to install dplyr in R 3.2.1

1 Answers1