Installation dependencies errors in Linux OS (Ubuntu)

Hello,

I experienced some problems when first attempting to install rCharts. The following is an account of how I was able to install the rCharts package on my Linux machine, which may be useful for some users.

linux system user:~$ uname -a

Linux desktop 3.13.0-8-generic #27-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 7 02:01:37 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

R session info sessionInfo()

R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)

locale:
[1] LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_NUMERIC=C LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_COLLATE=en_CA.UTF-8
[5] LC_MONETARY=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_MESSAGES=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_PAPER=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_NAME=C
[9] LC_ADDRESS=C LC_TELEPHONE=C LC_MEASUREMENT=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

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

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] tools_3.0.2

first error when installing package install.packages("rCharts")

Installing package into ‘path_to_R/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
package ‘rCharts’ is not available (for R version 3.0.2)

After this error, I followed ramnathv's recommendation for downloading the tar file at:
https://github.com/ramnathv/rCharts/archive/master.tar.gz
install.packages(path/to/tar/file, repos = NULL, type="source")

Installing package into ‘path_to_R/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in untar2(tarfile, files, list, exdir, restore_times) :
skipping pax global extended headers
ERROR: dependencies ‘RCurl’, ‘RJSONIO’, ‘whisker’, ‘yaml’ are not available for package ‘rCharts’

• removing ‘path_to_R/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/rCharts’
  Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘~/Downloads/rCharts-master.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status

Installing the dependencies resolved this error, but required additional problem solving:
install.packages("RCurl")

Installing package into ‘path_to_R/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
also installing the dependency ‘bitops’
trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/bitops_1.0-6.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 8734 bytes
opened URL

etc, etc

** package ‘RCurl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking for curl-config... no
Cannot find curl-config
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RCurl’

• removing ‘path_to_R/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/RCurl’
  Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘RCurl’ had non-zero exit status

Installation of RCurl failed due to a missing dependency on curl in the OS, which is ubuntu in my case. This is solved by installing curl in the linux terminal, as per:
http://www.omegahat.org/RCurl/FAQ.html
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

After this OS dependency was resolved, ramnathv's suggested R code for resolving the missing dependencies fixed the rCharts installation problems:

deps = c('RCurl', 'RJSONIO', 'whisker', 'yaml')`  
for (dep in deps){
  install.packages(dep)
}

R session info after installation

library(rCharts)
sessionInfo()
> R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)  
> Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)  

> locale:  
>  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8          LC_COLLATE=en_CA.UTF-8      
>  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_CA.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_CA.UTF-8    LC_PAPER=en_CA.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                   
>  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_CA.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C         

> attached base packages:  
> [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base 
   
> other attached packages:  
> [1] rCharts_0.4.2  

> loaded via a namespace (and not attached):  
> [1] grid_3.0.2      lattice_0.20-24 plyr_1.8        RJSONIO_1.0-3   tools_3.0.2     whisker_0.3-2     yaml_2.1.10