trouble installing runjags

[Colin]

Hello,

I am trying to install the runjags package on a remote computer cluster. I am running R 3.4.0. I have JAGS 4.0.0 loaded, and can confirm that the rjags package will install and load. When I go to install the runjags package install.packages('runjags'), I get the following error:

configure: error: "Cannot load JAGS library in /share/pkg/jags/4.0.0/install/lib64"

I think part of the problem is that the directory /share/pkg/jags/4.0.0/install/lib64 does not exist in jags/4.0.0, but the directory /share/pkg/jags/4.0.0/install/lib, without the 64 does.

Any ideas how I can get runjags up and running?

[Matt Denwood]

Hi Colin

Thanks for your report. The runjags package is still using the same configure script as rjags 3.x, which assumes that the JAGS installation follows the same format as the R installation. However, there is a workaround for non-standard installs detailed in the README file within the runjags package:

The configure script will try to guess the location of the JAGS
library installation. It will look in /<prefix>/<lib>, where

- <prefix> is the determined from the location of the jags
  script that launches the command line interface.

  For example, if this is "/usr/local/bin/jags", then prefix will
  be "/usr/local"

- <lib> is derived from the value of "LIBnn", returned by 
  "R CMD config LIBnn".

  This is particularly important on 64-bit unix, where R is 
  installed by default in /usr/local/lib64 and LIBnn is "lib64"

The configure script will also look for JAGS headers in
/<prefix>/include/JAGS

If the configure script fails to find the JAGS headers or library,
you can set the environment variables JAGS_INCLUDE and JAGS_LIB
to point to the correct directory.

The header files for the module itself should be able to detect the
version of JAGS installed on your system, but a JAGS_MAJOR_VERSION
environmental variable can be set in case of problems which may be
encountered with some versions of JAGS - e.g. JAGS 4-beta requires:

export JAGS_MAJOR_VERSION=4
R CMD install runjags...

You have correctly observed that rjags version 4.x is more forgiving about installation paths as it tries to use pkg-config - I will update the configure script in the next version of runjags to do the same.

Hope that helps,

Matt

[Colin]

This helps, thanks so much Matt. I should have digged deeper in the runjags documentation. I was able to get runjags to install using the following:

install.packages("runjags",configure.args = c("--with-jags-lib=/share/pkg/jags/4.0.0/install/lib"))