It appears that this problem only happens when R_LIBS is specified in ~/.Renviron. When it compiles 'relations', it's somehow not passing along the correct lib paths.
This is the test code: dir.create("test") .libPaths("test") install.packages("relations", type = "source") The 'relations' package depends on 'sets' and 'slam'. When there is no ~/.Renviron file it works: all three packages get installed into test/. The story is different when there is an file ~/.Renviron with the contents: R_LIBS=~/R (And the ~/R directory exists, of course.) It manages to install 'sets' and 'slam' into test/, but it fails to install 'relations'. I've added the output to the bottom of this email. I test this with R 2.15.1 and R 2.15.2 on Windows XP, and R 2.15.1 on Mac OS X 10.7.5. In all cases, I get the same result. Here's the output when there _is_ an .Renviron file: > install.packages("relations", type = "source") Installing package(s) into ‘C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/test’ (as ‘lib’ is unspecified) also installing the dependencies ‘sets’, ‘slam’ trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/sets_1.0-11.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 283388 bytes (276 Kb) opened URL downloaded 276 Kb trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/slam_0.1-26.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 39506 bytes (38 Kb) opened URL downloaded 38 Kb trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/relations_0.6.tar.gz' Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 493292 bytes (481 Kb) opened URL downloaded 481 Kb * installing *source* package 'sets' ... ** package 'sets' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked ** libs cygwin warning: MS-DOS style path detected: C:/R/R-215~1.1/etc/i386/Makeconf Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /cygdrive/c/R/R-215~1.1/etc/i386/Makeconf CYGWIN environment variable option "nodosfilewarning" turns off this warning. Consult the user's guide for more details about POSIX paths: http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames gcc -I"C:/R/R-215~1.1/include" -DNDEBUG -O3 -Wall -std=gnu99 -mtune=core2 -c closure.c -o closure.o gcc -shared -s -static-libgcc -o sets.dll tmp.def closure.o -LC:/R/R-215~1.1/bin/i386 -lR installing to C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/test/sets/libs/i386 ** R ** data ** inst ** preparing package for lazy loading ** help *** installing help indices ** building package indices ** installing vignettes 'sets.Rnw' ** testing if installed package can be loaded * DONE (sets) * installing *source* package 'slam' ... ** package 'slam' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked ** libs cygwin warning: MS-DOS style path detected: C:/R/R-215~1.1/etc/i386/Makeconf Preferred POSIX equivalent is: /cygdrive/c/R/R-215~1.1/etc/i386/Makeconf CYGWIN environment variable option "nodosfilewarning" turns off this warning. Consult the user's guide for more details about POSIX paths: http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/using.html#using-pathnames gcc -I"C:/R/R-215~1.1/include" -DNDEBUG -O3 -Wall -std=gnu99 -mtune=core2 -c grouped.c -o grouped.o gcc -I"C:/R/R-215~1.1/include" -DNDEBUG -O3 -Wall -std=gnu99 -mtune=core2 -c sparse.c -o sparse.o gcc -I"C:/R/R-215~1.1/include" -DNDEBUG -O3 -Wall -std=gnu99 -mtune=core2 -c util.c -o util.o gcc -shared -s -static-libgcc -o slam.dll tmp.def grouped.o sparse.o util.o -LC:/R/R-215~1.1/bin/i386 -lRblas -lgfortran -LC:/R/R-215~1.1/bin/i386 -lR installing to C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/test/slam/libs/i386 ** R ** preparing package for lazy loading ** help *** installing help indices ** building package indices ** testing if installed package can be loaded * DONE (slam) * installing *source* package 'relations' ... ** package 'relations' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked ** R ** data ** moving datasets to lazyload DB ** inst ** preparing package for lazy loading ** help *** installing help indices ** building package indices ** installing vignettes 'relations.Rnw' ** testing if installed package can be loaded Error : package 'sets' required by 'relations' could not be found Error: loading failed Execution halted ERROR: loading failed * removing 'C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/test/relations' Warning in install.packages : running command 'C:/R/R-215~1.1/bin/i386/R CMD INSTALL -l "C:/Documents and Settings/user/My Documents/test" C:\DOCUME~1\user\LOCALS~1\Temp\RtmpGSxf4J/downloaded_packages/relations_0.6.tar.gz' had status 1 Warning in install.packages : installation of package ‘relations’ had non-zero exit status The downloaded source packages are in ‘C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp\RtmpGSxf4J\downloaded_packages’ ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel