How to fix RCurl installation error Cannot find curl-config

Problem:

While trying to install RCurl using

BiocManager::install("RCurl")

you see the following error message:

> BiocManager::install("RCurl")
'getOption("repos")' replaces Bioconductor standard repositories, see
'?repositories' for details

replacement repositories:
    CRAN: https://cloud.r-project.org

Bioconductor version 3.12 (BiocManager 1.30.16), R 4.0.4 (2021-02-15)
Installing package(s) 'RCurl'
versuche URL 'https://cloud.r-project.org/src/contrib/RCurl_1.98-1.6.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 731035 bytes (713 KB)
==================================================
downloaded 713 KB

* installing *source* package ‘RCurl’ ...
** Paket ‘RCurl’ erfolgreich entpackt und MD5 Summen überprüft
** using staged installation
checking for curl-config... no
Cannot find curl-config
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘RCurl’
* removing ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library/RCurl’

The downloaded source packages are in
        ‘/tmp/RtmpVRZFXa/downloaded_packages’
Warnmeldung:
In .inet_warning(msg) :
  installation of package ‘RCurl’ had non-zero exit status

Solution

You need to install the libcurl development headers which include the curl-config executable.

On Ubuntu, you can install it using

sudo apt -y install libcurl4-openssl-dev