Unable to install package psych on macOS using Revolution R Open 3.2.2

Question

I try to install the psych package on macOS with Revolution R Open 3.2.2. I used install.packages("psych") and all the dependencies are going to be downloaded. The first dependency was successfully unzipped.

The following happens afterwards:

gfortran -arch x86_64   -fPIC  -g -O2  -c biv-nt.f -o biv-nt.o

gfortran -arch x86_64   -fPIC  -g -O2  -c sadmvnt.f -o sadmvnt.o

clang -dynamiclib -Wl,-headerpad_max_install_names -undefined dynamic_lookup -single_module -multiply_defined suppress -L/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/lib -L/Users/Shared/Jenkins/workspace/External-R-3.3.2/vendor/build/lib -o mnormt.so biv-nt.o sadmvnt.o -L/usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.2.3/x86_64 -L/usr/local/lib/x86_64 -L/usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.2.3 -L/usr/local/lib -lgfortran -F/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/.. -framework R -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation

ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/Users/Shared/Jenkins/workspace/External-R-3.3.2/vendor/build/lib'

ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.2.3/x86_64'

ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/usr/local/lib/x86_64'

ld: warning: directory not found for option '-L/usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-apple-darwin8/4.2.3'

ld: library not found for -lgfortran

clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

make: *** [mnormt.so] Error 1

ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘mnormt’

* removing ‘/Users/sebastian/Library/R/3.3/library/mnormt’

Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘mnormt’ had non-zero exit status

ERROR: dependency ‘mnormt’ is not available for package ‘psych’

* removing ‘/Users/sebastian/Library/R/3.3/library/psych’

Warning in install.packages :

  installation of package ‘psych’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in

  /private/var/folders/8d/tdsm42091lz926w1q2lx77c40000gn/T/RtmpHxWPQe/downloaded_packages

My system:

R version 3.3.2 (2016-10-31)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Sierra 10.12.1

This also happens for other packages, but not for all. I installed ggplot2, dplyr or tidyr and everything just worked fine.

Answer 1

Installing gfortran alone did not help in my case. Make sure that XCode is installed and uptodate. This helped me.

Answer 2

I had the same issue with many other R packages when I switched to MRO on MacOS. It could be two things:

1. You are missing gfortran, like @hrbrmstr mentioned in the comments.
2. Or, you have gfortran, but the link library path was not specified by the compiler, as you can see in the error messages before it bummed out at the gfortran line.

The solution to 2, which worked for me, is to edit ~/.R/Makevars to add your GCC/GFortran libraries. For GCC5:

LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib/gcc/5