Configuration failed because libcurl was not found

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?

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.

The Linux release is: CentOS Linux release 7.3.1611 (Core)

In my case, I was trying to install R package: devtools

------------------------- 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=...'

I checked $PATH, 'pkg-config' was in the PATH. But there is no libcurl.pc file in PKG_CONFIG_PATH (/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/).

Here is how I solved the problem.

su
wget https://github.com/curl/curl/releases/download/curl-7_55_0/curl-7.55.0.tar.gz
./configure
make 
make install

After this, I saw libcurl.pc file in PKG_CONFIG_PATH (/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/).

I got this error on Ubuntu Server 18.04, despite already having the libcurl4-openssl-dev apt package installed. I had to look up where the package installs libcurl.pc to figure out the command to use:

wget <curl-package-address>
R CMD INSTALL --configure-vars='LIB_DIR=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig' <curl-file.gz>

(Check the messages above the "ANTICONF ERROR" for the right file to download and install. For the questioner it was https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/curl_2.3.tar.gz; mine was https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/curl_4.3.tar.gz.)

Just ran into this issue when using GitHub actions to run a R script on a cron schedule.

Popping sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev into system() within the R file works. Much easier then setting up the bash command on the runner separately.

system("sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev")

------------------------- 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)

I ran into this issue when install an R package in Fedora Workstation 33. Following the hints, be sure to install libcurl-devel for the appropriate architecture, in this case libcurl-devel.x86_64:

sudo dnf install openssl-dev libcurl-devel.x86_64

In my case of Ubuntu 18, none of these solutions worked from within Rstudio.

When I finally decided to run R from the command line, success -- I couldn't tell you which 'solution' was the key because by this point I've already tried all of them.

Note that if I try to run Rstudio again, any attempt to install will still fail.

Thus there may be some issue with Rstudio not inferring the environment properly.