[GRASS-stats] can't initiate Grass with initGRASS() in R

[Markus Neteler]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 8:56 PM, William McCoy <wdmccoy at geo.umass.edu> wrote:
> At the suggestion of Roger Bivand, I am moving this issue from r-sig-geo.
>
> I am using spgrass6, but I can't seem to initiate a grass session. I
> managed to do this correctly months ago, but can't seem to now. Here
> is my code and sessionInfo:
>
>> library(spgrass6)
>
> Loading required package: sp
> Loading required package: rgdal
> Geospatial Data Abstraction Library extensions to R successfully
> loaded
> Loaded GDAL runtime: GDAL 1.7.2, released 2010/04/23
> Path to GDAL shared files: /usr/local/share/gdal
> Loaded PROJ.4 runtime: Rel. 4.7.1, 23 September 2009
> Path to PROJ.4 shared files: (autodetected)
> Loading required package: XML
> GRASS GIS interface loaded with GRASS version: (GRASS not running)
>>
>> loc <- initGRASS(gisBase = "/usr/local/grass-6.4.0svn/", home =
>> tempdir())
>
> g.gisenv: symbol lookup error: g.gisenv: undefined symbol:
> G__no_gisinit
> g.gisenv: symbol lookup error: g.gisenv: undefined symbol:
> G__no_gisinit
> g.gisenv: symbol lookup error: g.gisenv: undefined symbol:
> G__no_gisinit
> g.gisenv: symbol lookup error: g.gisenv: undefined symbol:
> G__no_gisinit
> g.gisenv: symbol lookup error: g.gisenv: undefined symbol:
> G__no_gisinit
> g.region: symbol lookup error: g.region: undefined symbol: G__gisinit
> Error in if (file.exists(file) == FALSE) if (!missing(asText) &&
> asText == :
> argument is of length zero
> Error in parseGRASS(cmd) : g.region not parsed
>
>> sessionInfo()
>
> R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)
> i386-redhat-linux-gnu


I have checked the archives and found this interesting email which might
explain what happens:

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 6:37 AM, Glynn Clements
<glynn at gclements.plus.com> wrote:
> G. Allegri wrote:
>
>> I understand that everything that needs GRASS has to be recompiled if
>> this version changes so much to change its interface (QGis-GRASS
>> plugin, GRASS-GDAL plugin, etc.). But I would like to know why the new
>> develbrunch_6 revision needs the GDAL itself to be recompiled. I can
>> understand it if GRASS would need a newer version of GDAL... is this
>> the case?
>
> You only need to re-compile GDAL itself if GDAL was built with GRASS
> support (--with-grass).
>
> In your original message, you wrote:
>
>> Even switching to develbrunch I receive the same error:
>> usr/local/lib/libgdal.so: undefined reference to `G_no_gisinit'
>
> This indicates that your GDAL library was indeed built --with-grass. I
> suggest building it without that option, and using the GDAL-GRASS
> plugin instead.
>
> If you build GDAL -with-grass, you will need to re-compile GDAL every
> time that GRASS is updated from now on. The problem arises from
> r32695, which makes G_gisinit() check that libgis was built with the
> same version of gis.h as the caller.
>
> The change adds G_gisinit() and G_no_gisinit() macros:
>
>        #define GIS_H_VERSION "$Revision: 32726 $"
>
>        #define G_gisinit(pgm) G__gisinit(GIS_H_VERSION, (pgm))
>        #define G_no_gisinit() G__no_gisinit(GIS_H_VERSION)
>
> The value of GIS_H_VERSION is automatically updated to the SVN
> revision whenever gis.h is updated.
>
> The change also renames the functions to G__gisinit() and
> G__no_gisinit() (which is why you get the "undefined reference" error
> when using an old GDAL with a new libgis), and adds version checks:
>
>        int G__gisinit(const char *version, const char *pgm)
>        {
>            ...
>            if (strcmp(version, GIS_H_VERSION) != 0)
>                G_fatal_error(_("Incompatible library version for module"));
>
> Any code which uses G_gisinit() or G_no_gisinit() passes the version
> of gis.h with which it was compiled to the library functions, which
> check that the same version of gis.h was used to compile the library.
>
> The rationale is to avoid having to track down subtle errors caused by
> version incompatibilities between libgis and any code which uses it.
> Now, if there is an incompatibility, you get a very unsubtle error
> telling you that there's an incompatibility.
>
> --
> Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
> _______________________________________________
> grass-user mailing list
> grass-user at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user

In essence, you would need to check how old your GDAL installation is.

Markus