Configuration failed because libcurl was not found

Question

I am trying to pull some json data from a remote server using fromJSON:

> server <- 'http://111.111.000.00:3000'
> streams <- fromJSON(paste(server, '/output/streams', sep=""), flatten=TRUE)

Result:

Error: Required package curl not found. 
Please run: install.packages('curl')

So I tried to install it:

> install.packages("curl")
Installing package into ‘/home/lauxxx/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/curl_2.3.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 400460 bytes (391 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 391 KB

* installing *source* package ‘curl’ ...
** package ‘curl’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
Using PKG_CFLAGS=
Using PKG_LIBS=-lcurl
------------------------- ANTICONF ERROR ---------------------------
Configuration failed because libcurl was not found. Try installing:
 * deb: libcurl4-openssl-dev (Debian, Ubuntu, etc)
 * rpm: libcurl-devel (Fedora, CentOS, RHEL)
 * csw: libcurl_dev (Solaris)
If libcurl is already installed, check that 'pkg-config' is in your
PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH contains a libcurl.pc file. If pkg-config
is unavailable you can set INCLUDE_DIR and LIB_DIR manually via:
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='INCLUDE_DIR=... LIB_DIR=...'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘curl’
* removing ‘/home/lauxxx/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3/curl’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘curl’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/tmp/RtmpdoavNf/downloaded_packages’

Then I tried to install libcurl4-openssl-dev:

> install.packages("libcurl4-openssl-dev")
Installing package into ‘/home/lau/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  package ‘libcurl4-openssl-dev’ is not available (for R version 3.3.1)

Why? What is going wrong? How can I fix it?

It was ok when I was on Xubuntu 16.04. But now I am on Kubuntu 16.10.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

libcurl4-openssl-dev is not a R package, but rather a linux library.

In a console type:

sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev

Note: you need sudo powers.