How to Install R 4.4.1 on Ubuntu 22.04

A user requested installing R 4.4.1 on our Ubuntu 22.04 server. It turns out to be non-trivial because of the missing libraries. Took me several hours to figure out the problems. My installation is a standard Ubuntu. If you have a minimal installation of Ubuntu, you might need to install extra packages. Here are the steps:

Install libxt-dev

apt install libxt-dev

Intall icu4c

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-73-2/icu4c-73_2-src.tgz
tar xvf icu4c-73_2-src.tgz
cd icu/source
./configure
make
sudo make install

Install libiconv

cd /tmp
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.16.tar.gz
tar -xvzf libiconv-1.16.tar.gz
cd libiconv-1.16
./configure
make
sudo make install

Install R

sudo mkdir /share/apps/R/R-4.4.1
cd /tmp
wget https://cloud.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.4.1.tar.gz
tar xvf R-4.4.1.tar.gz
cd R-4.4.1
export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib"
./configure --prefix=/share/apps/R/R-4.4.1 --with-libiconv-prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

I have included some of the error messages when I first tried to comile R without the libraries. Just in case you search for the error messages:

Error related to libxt-dev

configure: error: --with-x=yes (default) and X11 headers/libs are not available

Errors related to icu4c

/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_setAttribute_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_close_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `libiconv'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_open_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `uiter_setUTF8_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `libiconv_close'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_getLocaleByType_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `_libiconv_version'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_setStrength_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `u_versionToString_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `ucol_strcollIter_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `uloc_setDefault_73'
/usr/bin/ld: ../../lib/libR.so: undefined reference to `u_getVersion_73'

Errors related to libiconv

/tmp/R-4.4.1/src/main/platform.c:3630: undefined reference to `_libiconv_version'
/usr/bin/ld: sysutils.o: in function `iconv_open_internal':
/tmp/R-4.4.1/src/main/sysutils.c:1029: undefined reference to `libiconv_open'
/usr/bin/ld: sysutils.o: in function `Riconv':
/tmp/R-4.4.1/src/main/sysutils.c:1126: undefined reference to `libiconv'
/usr/bin/ld: sysutils.o: in function `Riconv_close':
/tmp/R-4.4.1/src/main/sysutils.c:1218: undefined reference to `libiconv_close'