BiocManager::install("DiffBind") mergeOne.c:341:3: note: use option -std=c99 or -std=gnu99 to compile your code

Question

I am using

BiocManager::install("DiffBind")

to install the package "DiffBind" on CentOS_7, I got the error:

gcc -I"/opt/common/CentOS_7/R/R-4.0.5/lib64/R/include" -DNDEBUG -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -I'/lila/home/lid/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0/Rhtslib/include' -I'/admin/opt/common/CentOS_7/R/R-4.0.5/lib64/R/library/Rcpp/include' -I/usr/local/include   -fpic  -g -O2  -c mergeOne.c -o mergeOne.o
mergeOne.c: In function ‘mungeTarget’:
mergeOne.c:341:3: error: ‘for’ loop initial declarations are only allowed in C99 mode
   for (int i=l;i<l+r;i++) {
   ^
mergeOne.c:341:3: note: use option -std=c99 or -std=gnu99 to compile your code
make: *** [mergeOne.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘DiffBind’

Can anyone tell me what should I do? Thanks

Answer 1

You can set a specific compiler in ~/.R/Makevars file, create the folder and write it down in Makevers:

CC = gcc -std=c99

or:

CC = gcc -std=gnu99

Answer 2

The previous answer is correct, in that the compiler wants to be able to use C99 to compile your library.

However, the solution of putting CC = gcc -std=c99 into your ~/.R/Makevars is a little bit blunt, since everything that you now compile not directly from source is going to use the -std=c99 flag. This is a recipe for some confusing and hard to track down error messages. It's a bit like installing everything in your base conda environment and waiting for everything to break.

It's a safer option to use withr, which allows you to specify compiler flags for individual installations, keeping everything nice and neat. It works a bit like the with (or within) function in R which constructs an environment to execute some command in.

library(withr)

with_makevars(
    c(PKG_CFLAGS = "-std=c99"), 
    BiocManager::install("DiffBind"), 
    assignment = "+="
)

It can also be performed directly with BiocManager:

BiocManager::install(
    "DiffBind", 
    configure.vars = c("CC" = "gcc", "-std" = "c99")
)