libclang-dev preventing install of rstudio-1.3.1093-amd64.deb on Debian 10

TL;DR I cannot install R Studio on Debian 10. The .deb package has dependencies that I am not able to satisfy. -Mike

I have been using RStudio 1.2 for a while on Debian 9. I upgraded from Debian 9 to Debian 10 (on a chromebook, the upgrade "blew away" my R Studio). No worries (I thought) I can merely download and install the latest version of RStudio from RStudio's site.

user@penguin:~/tmp$ sudo apt install ./rstudio-1.3.1093-amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'rstudio' instead of './rstudio-1.3.1093-amd64.deb'
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 rstudio : Depends: libclang-dev but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Heck. Darn.

I googled the error message and poked around with some "quick win" suggestions such as:
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade etc.

user@penguin:~/tmp$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Hit:1 http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease                                                  
Hit:3 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                         
Ign:4 https://storage.googleapis.com/cros-packages/86 buster InRelease         
Hit:5 https://storage.googleapis.com/cros-packages/86 buster Release
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  dh-python docbook-xml g++-6 gnupg-agent gvfs-bin gvfs-common libappindicator3-1 libarmadillo7 libavcodec57 libavresample3 libavutil55
  libblas-common libboost-filesystem1.62.0 libboost-iostreams1.62.0 libboost-system1.62.0 libcryptsetup4 libdap23 libdbusmenu-glib4
  libdbusmenu-gtk3-4 libdns-export162 libegl1-mesa libgc1c2 libgdbm3 libgeos-3.5.1 libglew2.0 libicu57 libindicator3-7 libisc-export160
  libmariadbclient-dev libncurses5 libobjc-6-dev libobjc4 libperl5.24 libpoppler64 libprocps6 libproj12 libpython3.5-minimal libpython3.5-stdlib
  librarian0 libssl1.0.2 libswresample2 libtiff5-dev libtinfo-dev libunistring0 libva-drm1 libva-x11-1 libva1 libvpx4 libwayland-egl1-mesa
  libwebpmux2 libx264-148 libx265-95 libxerces-c3.1 libxfont1 openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-8-jdk-headless openjdk-8-jre python3.5 python3.5-minimal
  rarian-compat rename rsync sgml-base sgml-data tcpd xml-core
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Eek.
I am leery of letting apt autoremove run amok killing off packages. My linux is on a chromebook, I dont know if apt is necessarily aware of all dependencies. Maybe apt is fully aware. Maybe removing those packages could help to fix issues. Maybe.

I attempted to install libclang-dev per the message above regarding unmet dependencies. I then continued down the rabbit hole, chasing the chain of unmet dependencies. Each apt install coughed up one unmet dependency, so I tried each one:

 sudo apt install libclang-dev
 sudo apt install libclang-7-dev
 sudo apt install libclang-common-7-dev
 sudo apt install libllvm7

Here be dragons?

I do not know where to go now, after the last one. See below.

user@penguin:~/tmp$ sudo apt install libllvm7
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
libllvm7 is already the newest version (1:7.1.0~svn353565-1~exp1~20190407125230.69).
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  dh-python docbook-xml g++-6 gnupg-agent gvfs-bin gvfs-common libappindicator3-1 libarmadillo7 libavcodec57 libavresample3 libavutil55
  libblas-common libboost-filesystem1.62.0 libboost-iostreams1.62.0 libboost-system1.62.0 libcryptsetup4 libdap23 libdbusmenu-glib4
  libdbusmenu-gtk3-4 libdns-export162 libegl1-mesa libgc1c2 libgdbm3 libgeos-3.5.1 libglew2.0 libicu57 libindicator3-7 libisc-export160
  libmariadbclient-dev libncurses5 libobjc-6-dev libobjc4 libperl5.24 libpoppler64 libprocps6 libproj12 libpython3.5-minimal libpython3.5-stdlib
  librarian0 libssl1.0.2 libswresample2 libtiff5-dev libtinfo-dev libunistring0 libva-drm1 libva-x11-1 libva1 libvpx4 libwayland-egl1-mesa
  libwebpmux2 libx264-148 libx265-95 libxerces-c3.1 libxfont1 openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-8-jdk-headless openjdk-8-jre python3.5 python3.5-minimal
  rarian-compat rename rsync sgml-base sgml-data tcpd xml-core
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

That line reading: libllvm7 is already the newest version (1:7.1.0~svn353565-1~exp1~20190407125230.69). has me stumped! What to do now?

gdebi didnt help either :frowning:

After more googling, I tried gdebi too... but that did not help either.

user@penguin:~/tmp$ sudo gdebi ./rstudio-1.3.1093-amd64.deb 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
Reading state information... Done
This package is uninstallable
Cannot install 'libclang-dev'

Any help will be much appreciated!

Solved.

  1. Backed up my home directory, threw the copy up on GDrive
  2. Removed linux (completely, wiped the container)
  3. Re-installed linux (very easy on a chromebook!)
  4. Downloaded and unpacked my home directory
  5. Downloaded and installed RStudio
  6. Had one issue to contend with:
rstudio: error while loading shared libraries: libsmime3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
  1. Quickly solved h/t to @kevinushey and this post! Thank you Kevin!

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