[R] Failure to install from source when cmake is found but is too old

[rp2927]

Describe the bug, including details regarding any error messages, version, and platform.

Hi,

Attempting to install "arrow" on R v4.4 produces this error:

install.packages('arrow')
[...]

• installing source package ‘arrow’ ...
  ** package ‘arrow’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
  ** using staged installation
  *** pkg-config found.
  *** Found local C++ source: 'tools/cpp'
  *** Building libarrow from source
  For build options and troubleshooting, see the install guide:
  https://arrow.apache.org/docs/r/articles/install.html
  **** Not using cmake found at /usr/bin/cmake
  Error in .make_numeric_version(x, strict, .standard_regexps()$valid_numeric_version) :
  invalid non-character version specification 'x' (type: double)
  Calls: build_libarrow ... as.numeric_version -> numeric_version -> .make_numeric_version
  Execution halted
  [...]

The failure seems to occur in r/tools/nixlibs.R, in find_cmake, at line 718:

arrow/r/tools/nixlibs.R

Line 718 in 1f24799

if (found_version > 0) {

which should rather be:

    if (found_version > "0") {

I hope this helps.
Razvan

Component(s)

R

[nealrichardson]

Thank you. I've revised the title of the issue to clarify what's failing. Would you be interested in making a PR to fix this? I believe you've identified exactly the issue.

A workaround, if you still need it, would be to upgrade cmake on your system, or download a newer version and set the environment variable CMAKE=/path/to/your/downloaded/cmake

[thisisnic]

Closing this as it's been fixed in #44989