A brief note on how to install rattle/RGtk2 on macOS

Install-Rattle-on-macOS.md

Installing Rattle on MacOS 10.11 (or above)

This article was moved to https://zhiyzuo.github.io/installation-rattle/ !

First of all thank you very much for this tutorial. I'm struggling on the launch of rattle just by itself. here is the result I get when I try tu use rattle in rstudio :

library(rattle)
R session is headless; GTK+ not initialized.
Rattle: A free graphical interface for data mining with R.
Version 5.0.14 Copyright (c) 2006-2017 Togaware Pty Ltd.
Type 'rattle()' to shake, rattle, and roll your data.
rattle()

(R:88491): Gtk-WARNING **: gtk_disable_setlocale() must be called before gtk_init()
Error in rattle() : Can't load RGtk2.
A windowing system can't be accessed?
Maybe you are using a remote terminal (ssh) or RStudio browser connection.
Consider using remote desktop, ssh -X, or X2Go depending on your platform.
Running rattle() locally on a desktop is the default.

Like you told another user here I tried to first load RGtk2 in the xquartz terminal but it does't seem to work. Do you have any idea on this ?

@zhiyzuo, thanks for you efforts in presenting this tutorial. At Step 7, when applying brew install --with-x11 cairo, brew gave "Warning: cairo: this formula has no --with-x11 option so it will be ignored!", how do you enable the --with-x11 option at this step? Thanks!

does anyone have any idea what the issue is with this load error for RGtk2?

installing to /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/library/RGtk2/libs
** R
** demo
** inst
** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
** help
*** installing help indices
** building package indices
** testing if installed package can be loaded
Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘RGtk2’:
.onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for 'RGtk2', details:
call: .RGtkCall("S_gtk_builder_get_type", PACKAGE = "RGtk2")
error: object has no G type
Error: loading failed
Execution halted
ERROR: loading failed

sessionInfo is here:

R version 3.5.0 (2018-04-23)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS High Sierra 10.13.5

@cratzdo The most recent commit to cairo.rb removed the --with-x11 option. I used brew edit cairo to replace the Formula with the one at: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/1fea60405bf98c6385dfba18c75a7fb667dc3a40/Formula/cairo.rb.

@jamesmnw for(i in 1:1000000){print("THANKS")} That hidden error in the cairo build of ignoring the -x11 flag caused me days of grief. Thanks for pointing that out. Your edit worked perfectly, allowing the rest of the instructions to work. I can now Rattle and RQDA and the world is a better place. :-)

@milti, follow @jamesmnw's advice and make sure to brew reinstall --with-x11 cairo after editing the cairo formula.

Thanks for your detailed advice. But it is still frustrating for me.
After typing "brew install --build-from-source --verbose gtk+" , I received "Error: gtk+ 2.24.32 did not build"
Please help me out. It's too hard for me.

The key to success for me was to use @jamesmnw advice and edit the configuration file for cairo using the formula supplied in his post and build. After that gtk+ build without errors. I could then just follow the instructions to install RGtk2 and cairodevice + rattle. To bad they messed up Homebrews version of cairo and caused all these problems

Hello,
I need help. I am at step 8 with "brew edit gtk+"
When I am done editing the last two lines in df install, I do not know how to save or quit in the terminal.
I did run export EDITOR = vim.
I hope I provided info for troubleshooting.
Thanks a lot.

What is the solution to the below?

~/Downloads -> R CMD INSTALL RGtk2_2.20.34.tar.gz
During startup - Warning messages:
1: Setting LC_TIME failed, using "C"
2: Setting LC_MESSAGES failed, using "C"
3: Setting LC_MONETARY failed, using "C"
* installing to library ‘/usr/local/lib/R/3.5/site-library’
* installing *source* package ‘RGtk2’ ...
** package ‘RGtk2’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
checking for pkg-config... /usr/local/bin/pkg-config
checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for INTROSPECTION... no
checking for GTK... no
configure: error: GTK version 2.8.0 required
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RGtk2’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/3.5/site-library/RGtk2’

As directed the version of GTK I manage to install is 2.24.32_2. But for RGtk2 it needs 2.8.0? Could you elaborate on the exact steps to perform to achieve this please?

As I just pointed out in a comment under @zhiyzuo's post (https://zhiyzuo.github.io/installation-rattle/#comment-3944233914), the whole thing can be simplified to this:

system('brew install gtk+')

local({
  if (Sys.info()[['sysname']] != 'Darwin') return()

  .Platform$pkgType = 'mac.binary.el-capitan'
  unlockBinding('.Platform', baseenv())
  assign('.Platform', .Platform, 'package:base')
  lockBinding('.Platform', baseenv())

  options(
    pkgType = 'both', install.packages.compile.from.source = 'always',
    repos = 'https://macos.rbind.org'
  )
})

install.packages(c('RGtk2', 'cairoDevice', 'rattle'))

No more struggling with editing the gtk+ formula :)

thx,it work!

I am getting this when doing "R CMD INSTALL RGtk2_2.20.33.tar.gz"

configure: error: GTK version 2.8.0 required

I am on MacOS Sierra 10.12.6, R version is 3.4.2
When I did "brew install --build-from-source --verbose gtk+" it installed GTK 2.24.31_1

I encountered same problem. Did you solve it?