title: Can't install package reshape2 for R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4
body: <p>I am having trouble installing the reshape2 package for R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS.  I decided not to upgrade to R 3.x because many of the packages that I use have not been upgraded to support the new version. </p>
  
  <p>When I try to install reshape2 using R 2.15.3 on Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS, I get the following.   </p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; install.packages("reshape2")                                                                                      
  Installing package(s) into â/usr/local/lib/R/site-libraryâ
  (as âlibâ is unspecified)
  Warning in install.packages("reshape2") :
    'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable
  Would you like to use a personal library instead?  (y/n) y
  Would you like to create a personal library
  ~/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15
  to install packages into?  (y/n) y
  
  Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available
  also installing the dependencies âplyrâ, âstringrâ
  
  trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/plyr_1.8.1.tar.gz'
  Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 393233 bytes (384 Kb)
  opened URL
  ==================================================
  downloaded 384 Kb
  
  trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/stringr_0.6.2.tar.gz'
  Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 20636 bytes (20 Kb)
  opened URL
  ==================================================
  downloaded 20 Kb
  
  trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/reshape2_1.2.2.tar.gz'
  Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 27220 bytes (26 Kb)
  opened URL
  ==================================================
  downloaded 26 Kb
  
  ERROR: dependency âRcppâ is not available for package âplyrâ
  * removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/plyrâ
  * installing *source* package âstringrâ ...
  ** package âstringrâ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
  ** R
  ** inst
  ** preparing package for lazy loading
  ** help
  *** installing help indices
  ** building package indices
  ** testing if installed package can be loaded
  
  * DONE (stringr)
  ERROR: dependency âplyrâ is not available for package âreshape2â
  * removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/reshape2â
  
  The downloaded source packages are in
          â/tmp/RtmpxP5OIc/downloaded_packagesâ
  Warning messages:
  1: In install.packages("reshape2") :
    installation of package âplyrâ had non-zero exit status
  2: In install.packages("reshape2") :
    installation of package âreshape2â had non-zero exit status
  &gt; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried to then install the missing Rcpp but get the error message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Warning message:
  package âRcppâ is not available (for R version 2.15.3) 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I searched some more and discovered that Rcpp now requires R version 3.x but that there is a RcppClassic version that is backwards compatible.</p>
  
  <p>When trying to install RcppClassic, I get:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Installing package(s) into â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15â
  (as âlibâ is unspecified)
  Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available
  trying URL 'http://cran.cs.wwu.edu/src/contrib/RcppClassic_0.9.5.tar.gz'
  Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 185057 bytes (180 Kb)
  opened URL
  ==================================================
  downloaded 180 Kb
  
  ERROR: dependency âRcppâ is not available for package âRcppClassicâ
  * removing â/home/ubuntu/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.15/RcppClassicâ
  
  The downloaded source packages are in
          â/tmp/RtmpxP5OIc/downloaded_packagesâ
  Warning message:
  In install.packages("RcppClassic") :
    installation of package âRcppClassicâ had non-zero exit status
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I then tried and was able to install Rcpp using "sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp":</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp                                             
  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree       
  Reading state information... Done
  The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
    libgudev-1.0-0 gir1.2-gudev-1.0
  Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
  The following extra packages will be installed:
    littler r-cran-int64
  Suggested packages:
    r-cran-getopt r-cran-inline
  The following NEW packages will be installed:
    littler r-cran-int64 r-cran-rcpp
  0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
  Need to get 2,899 kB of archives.
  After this operation, 11.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
  Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
  Get:1 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe littler amd64 0.1.5-1 [32.2 kB]
  Get:2 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe r-cran-int64 amd64 1.1.2-1 [359 kB]
  Get:3 http://us-west-2.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe r-cran-rcpp amd64 0.9.9-1 [2,508 kB]
  Fetched 2,899 kB in 0s (8,959 kB/s)
  Selecting previously unselected package littler.
  (Reading database ... 60157 files and directories currently installed.)
  Unpacking littler (from .../littler_0.1.5-1_amd64.deb) ...
  Selecting previously unselected package r-cran-int64.
  Unpacking r-cran-int64 (from .../r-cran-int64_1.1.2-1_amd64.deb) ...
  Selecting previously unselected package r-cran-rcpp.
  Unpacking r-cran-rcpp (from .../r-cran-rcpp_0.9.9-1_amd64.deb) ...
  Processing triggers for man-db ...
  Setting up littler (0.1.5-1) ...
  Setting up r-cran-int64 (1.1.2-1) ...
  Setting up r-cran-rcpp (0.9.9-1) ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But when I tried to install "reshape2" in R, I got the same error messages as before.</p>
  
  <p>What I don't understand is why I'm getting the error message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Warning: dependency âRcppâ is not available
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Since 'sudo apt-get install r-cran-rcpp' worked</p>
  
  <p>After some more searching, I found a vignette on how to use RcppClassic here: <a href="http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RcppClassic/vignettes/RcppClassic-intro.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RcppClassic/vignettes/RcppClassic-intro.pdf</a> </p>
  
  <p>However, making modifications to the DESCRIPTION, NAMESPACE and MAKEVAR files is starting to go beyond my capabilities so I'm reaching out for help. </p>
  
  <p>Here's the output from sessionInfo():</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; sessionInfo()
  R version 2.15.3 (2013-03-01)
  Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
  
  locale:
   [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
   [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8    
   [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
   [7] LC_PAPER=C                 LC_NAME=C                 
   [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
  [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
  
  attached base packages:
  [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base    
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance!</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 3/15/2014:</strong> My "use case" is that I'm running a series of periodic jobs on AWS EC2 instances so I don't need the latest/greatest software features.  What I have using R 2.15 on my Mac development machine works so I was just looking to port what I have to my AWS EC2 Ubuntu instances. </p>
  
  <p>The packages I use are: reshape2, xlsx (and xlsxjars), RJSONIO, stringr, R2HTML, RCurl, plots, lattice, latticeExtra, gdata and ggplot2.</p>