Trouble installing nloptr package on R 3.3.0

Question

I can't install the package nloptr 1.0.4 on R 3.3.0. The messages are the following:

> install.packages("nloptr")
Installing package into ‘/Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
trying URL 'https://cran.revolutionanalytics.com/src/contrib/nloptr_1.0.4.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/octet-stream' length 353942 bytes (345 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 345 KB

* installing *source* package ‘nloptr’ ...
** package ‘nloptr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking for g++... g++
checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes
checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... g++ -E
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... (cached) yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... (cached) yes
checking for pkg-config... yes
configure: Now testing for NLopt header file.
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking nlopt.h usability... yes
checking nlopt.h presence... yes
checking for nlopt.h... yes
configure: Suitable NLopt library found.
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating src/Makevars
** libs
/usr/bin/clang++ -I/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/opt/local/include    -fPIC  -pipe -Os -arch x86_64 -stdlib=libstdc++  -c dummy.cpp -o dummy.o
/usr/bin/clang -I/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/include -DNDEBUG  -I/opt/local/include    -fPIC  -pipe -Os -arch x86_64  -c nloptr.c -o nloptr.o
/usr/bin/clang++ -dynamiclib -Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names -undefined dynamic_lookup -single_module -multiply_defined suppress -L/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib -L/opt/local/lib -Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names -o nloptr.so dummy.o nloptr.o -F/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/.. -framework R -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation
installing to /Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr/libs
** R
** inst
** preparing package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** installing vignettes
** testing if installed package can be loaded
Error in dyn.load(file, DLLpath = DLLpath, ...) : 
  unable to load shared object '/Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr/libs/nloptr.so':
  dlopen(/Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr/libs/nloptr.so, 6): Symbol not found: _nlopt_add_equality_mconstraint
  Referenced from: /Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr/libs/nloptr.so
  Expected in: flat namespace
 in /Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr/libs/nloptr.so
Error: loading failed
Execution halted
ERROR: loading failed
* removing ‘/Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr’
* restoring previous ‘/Users/fgomesbarros/Library/R/3.3/library/nloptr’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘nloptr’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/private/var/folders/rz/dp6vmb39165406h9qv69q60c0000gn/T/RtmpLvLOmn/downloaded_packages’`

My R version is 3.3.0 as you can see below:

> version
               _                           
platform       x86_64-apple-darwin12.6.0   
arch           x86_64                      
os             darwin12.6.0                
system         x86_64, darwin12.6.0        
status                                     
major          3                           
minor          3.0                         
year           2016                        
month          05                          
day            03                          
svn rev        70573                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 3.3.0 (2016-05-03)
nickname       Supposedly Educational      

Any clues?

I also tried to install in olders versions (2.3.3 and 2.3.4) of R and had the same issue.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I tried to reinstall the package as a root and it worked! I don't know why.

Answer 2

I was able to solve the problem on my Mac using

$ brew install nlopt

Looking into the issue I noticed that others had reportedly resolved the issue on Ubuntu using

$ sudo apt-get install libnlopt-dev

Apparently you now need to install it outside of R.

Answer 3

I had to reinstall R, using the R-CRAN installer and uninstalling the macports package.

It finally worked!

Answer 4

If you run into this problem with nloptr 1.2.0 and R 3.5.1 on macOS High Sierra, brew install nlopt will fail because of inadequate permissions in /usr/local. The fix:

$ mkdir /usr/local/Frameworks
$ sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/Frameworks
$ brew install nlopt

In other words, you don't want to change permissions for the entire /usr/local directory. The installation fails when the Homebrew tries to create /usr/local/Framework. So, do it by hand as shown above. Then try again > install.packages("nloptr"). It worked for me.