R: cannot install ‘rasclass’ package on Ubuntu 14.04

I am trying to install ‘rasclass’ package on R (version 3.2.3) but somehow the installation always fails. The output is too large to be pasted here, but I found something interested in this question, that might be the key to solve this issue.

Shortly: from the terminal I can see I have gcc-4.8 and 4.9, g++-4.8 and 4.9, and gfortran-4.8. I remeber changing the symbolic links between gcc and g++ to use the “4.9” version. Can not having gfortran-4.9 be a problem? If so, how do I change the symbolc links to this version after downloading?

Finally, I just paste the very last part of the (failed) package installation.

/usr/bin/ld: impossibile trovare -lgfortran
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [RcppEigen.so] Errore 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘RcppEigen’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/RcppEigen’
* installing *source* package ‘MatrixModels’ ...
** package ‘MatrixModels’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** R
** preparing package for lazy loading
Error in loadNamespace(j <- i[[1L]], c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[j]]) : 
  namespace ‘Matrix’ 1.1-4 is being loaded, but >= 1.1.5 is required
ERROR: lazy loading failed for package ‘MatrixModels’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/MatrixModels’
ERROR: dependencies ‘minqa’, ‘RcppEigen’ are not available for package ‘lme4’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/lme4’
ERROR: dependencies ‘SparseM’, ‘MatrixModels’ are not available for package ‘quantreg’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/quantreg’
ERROR: dependency ‘lme4’ is not available for package ‘pbkrtest’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/pbkrtest’
ERROR: dependencies ‘pbkrtest’, ‘quantreg’ are not available for package ‘car’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/car’
ERROR: dependencies ‘car’, ‘randomForest’ are not available for package ‘rasclass’
* removing ‘/home/umberto/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2/rasclass’

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/tmp/RtmphSiL6j/downloaded_packages’
There were 11 warnings (use warnings() to see them)

Answer

Indeed, it was a problem of gfortran.

I installed the version 4.9 through sudo apt-get install gfortran-4.9, tried to reinstall rasclass package and all its dependencies, and now it works. As stated in a comment of this question, I did messed up with the symbolic links of g++ and gcc, to use the 4.9 version, but I did not have the same version of gfortran. This seemed to be the key to solve the problem.

Finally, to choose gcc an g++ version, I followed this answer. Hope this can help anybody.

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Answer