I am using Anaconda to manage my R-installation. It works great for packages available in the R-channels provided by Anaconda, but I am having troubles installing packages not contained in the Anaconda repos.

I have tried a few different approaches, all listed below together with their error output.

### 1. `install.packages('rafalib')`

Suggested to work here [conda - How to install R packages that are not available in "R-essentials"?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34705917/conda-how-to-install-r-packages-that-are-not-available-in-r-essentials). My `.libPaths()` points to `'/home/user/anaconda2/lib/R/library'`.

Out:

```
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
Error in download.file(url, destfile = f, quiet = TRUE) : 
  unsupported URL scheme
Error: .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'tcltk', details:
  call: fun(libname, pkgname)
  error: Can't find a usable init.tcl in the following directories: 
    /opt/anaconda1anaconda2anaconda3/lib/tcl8.5 ./lib/tcl8.5 ./lib/tcl8.5 ./library ./library ./tcl8.5.18/library ./tcl8.5.18/library

This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.

```

I installed `tcl` from the conda channel `r-old`, but `install.packages()` still threw the same error message.

### 2. `options(menu.graphics=FALSE)` and then `install.packages('rafalib')`

I got a list of mirrors and chose one.

Out:

```
Selection: 15
trying URL 'http://cran.utstat.utoronto.ca/src/contrib/rafalib_1.0.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 11798 bytes (11 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 11 KB

sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook

The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/Rtmphwpta0/downloaded_packages’
Warning message:
In install.packages("rafalib") :
  installation of package ‘rafalib’ had non-zero exit status

```

Both 2 and 3 are from [Disable/suppress tcltk popup for CRAN mirror selection in R](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7430452/disable-suppress-tcltk-popup-for-cran-mirror-selection-in-r)

### 3. Setting the mirror in `~/.Rprofile`

Before trying `install.packages()`, I added the following to my `~/.Rprofile`.

```
## Default repo
local({r <- getOption("repos");
       r["CRAN"] <- "http://cran.us.r-project.org"; 
       options(repos=r)})

```

Out:

```
trying URL 'http://cran.us.r-project.org/src/contrib/rafalib_1.0.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 11798 bytes (11 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 11 KB

sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook

The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/RtmppIz9rT/downloaded_packages’
Warning message:
In install.packages("rafalib") :
  installation of package ‘rafalib’ had non-zero exit status

```

### 4. Setting the download method to 'curl' or 'wget'.

While keeping the new `~/.Rprofile configuration`. I guess this wasn't necessary since the package seems to be downloading fine now, but I tested it just in case.

Out:

```
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
Warning in download.packages(pkgs, destdir = tmpd, available = available,  :
  download of package ‘rafalib’ failed
Warning message:
In download.file(url, destfile, method, mode = "wb", ...) :
  download had nonzero exit status

```

### 5. Manual [download of rafalib](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rafalib/index.html)

`install.packages('../Downloads/rafalib_1.0.0.tar.gz', repos=NULL, type='source')`

Out:

```
sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook
Warning message:
In install.packages("../Downloads/rafalib_1.0.0.tar.gz", repos = NULL,  :
  installation of package ‘../Downloads/rafalib_1.0.0.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status

```

### 6. Building a conda package from `rafalib`

I opened a separate issue for this [Errors building R-packages for conda](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36651189/errors-building-r-packages-for-conda). In short, it complains about missing dependencies that I already have installed. **Update** I got a round the dependency problem and I am now stuck at the same `rl_signal_event_hook`-error as for my other approaches.

### 7. `sudo ln /usr/lib/libncursesw.so.6 /usr/lib/libncursesw.so.5`

As per <https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/1679>, but it didn't fix the issue for me.

---

So it seems like I can now download the package fine, but installing it fails. I have seen the error message `sh: symbol lookup error: sh: undefined symbol: rl_signal_event_hook` previously when using R with `irkernel` in the `Jupyter Notebook`, but it has never obstructed my work. I have never seen anything relating to that error message when running python through anaconda.

I'm out of ideas. Does anyone know how I can install R-packages not provided by anaconda, such as `rafalib` or `swirl`?

I am on Linux (Antergos, an Arch derivative) with kernel 4.4.5-1-ARCH.

---

**UPDATE 2016/04/15**

There is some [related discussion in this thread](https://github.com/ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues/issues/455). I have tried to get around this error by installing different versions of ncurses, including [this patched version](https://github.com/MaxNoe/conda-recipes), and I have tried to link the readline libraries, [as suggested here](https://github.com/conda/conda/issues/1679), but I keep running into the same error. I'm quite lost at this point and any help to solve this would be greatly appreciated.