ggplot2 fails to install on R 3.0.2

Question

I am unable to install ggplot2 in R 3.0.2 on Ubuntu.

When I run

install.packages('ggplot2',dependencies = TRUE)

I get the following error.

 > install.packages('ggplot2',dependencies = TRUE)
Installing package into ‘/home/gowthamn/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  dependencies ‘plyr’, ‘testthat’ are not available
also installing the dependencies ‘reshape2’, ‘scales’, ‘Hmisc’

trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/reshape2_1.4.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 34693 bytes (33 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 33 Kb

trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/scales_0.2.4.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 40093 bytes (39 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 39 Kb

trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/Hmisc_3.16-0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 629536 bytes (614 Kb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 614 Kb

trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/ggplot2_1.0.1.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 2351203 bytes (2.2 Mb)
opened URL
==================================================
downloaded 2.2 Mb

ERROR: dependency ‘plyr’ is not available for package ‘reshape2’
    * removing ‘/home/gowthamn/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/reshape2’
    Warning in install.packages :
      installation of package ‘reshape2’ had non-zero exit status
    ERROR: dependency ‘plyr’ is not available for package ‘scales’
    * removing ‘/home/gowthamn/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/scales’
    Warning in install.packages :
      installation of package ‘scales’ had non-zero exit status
    ERROR: dependencies ‘plyr’, ‘reshape2’, ‘scales’ are not available for package ‘ggplot2’
    * removing ‘/home/gowthamn/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/ggplot2’
    Warning in install.packages :
      installation of package ‘ggplot2’ had non-zero exit status
    ERROR: dependencies ‘ggplot2’, ‘scales’ are not available for package ‘Hmisc’
    * removing ‘/home/gowthamn/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.0/Hmisc’
    Warning in install.packages :
      installation of package ‘Hmisc’ had non-zero exit status

I also tried

install.packages(c('reshape2','scales'))

Get the error that plyr is not available.

I also upgraded Ubuntu and also reinstalled latest version of R and updated the packages using update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE). But, nothing worked. What can I do?

Answer 1

If you do not need the latest version, you can install the packaged version distributed by Ubuntu by using:

sudo apt-get install r-cran-ggplot2