November 4, 2022

fatal error: libpq-fe.h: No such file or directory

Introduction

You might encounter the following error while trying to install some packages in RStudio IDE:

I encountered that error while trying to install RPostgreSQL package and that resulted in the error below:

ERROR: compilation failed for package ‘RPostgreSQL’

As it can be seen from the error the problem is that libpq-fe.h file is missing. To solve the problem install the required packages as written below.

To install the missing libraries and files on Debian derivatives run the following command:

sudo apt install libpq-dev

To install the missing libraries and files on RHEL derivatives run the following command:

sudo yum install postgresql-devel

Conclusion

Installing the mentioned package should solve the problem. Thank you for reading and hope this was helpful.