Error installing the package

The failure occurs while compiling callbackqueue.cpp through thread.h, while the configure step reports that pkg-config is unavailable. Reproduce the source installation on Windows 11 with R 4.5.0, then inspect the configure and build setup for how libuv headers are located. Done means the source package installs without the missing uv.h error.

Hi, trying to install the package on a Windows 11 machine, using install.packages("httpuv") but I am getting the following error:

thread.h:4:10: fatal error: uv.h: No such file or directory
    4 | #include <uv.h>
      |          ^~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-45~1.0/etc/x64/Makeconf:296: callbackqueue.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'httpuv'

I am not sure what that is, any suggestions?

The entire text from the console

> install.packages("httpuv")

  There is a binary version available but the source version is later:
       binary source needs_compilation
httpuv 1.6.15 1.6.16              TRUE

installing the source package ‘httpuv’

trying URL 'http://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/httpuv_1.6.16.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 1890033 bytes (1.8 MB)
downloaded 1.8 MB

* installing *source* package 'httpuv' ...
** this is package 'httpuv' version '1.6.16'
** package 'httpuv' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation

   **********************************************
   WARNING: this package has a configure script
         It probably needs manual configuration
   **********************************************


** libs
make: pkg-config: No such file or directory
using C compiler: 'gcc.exe (x86_64-posix-seh-rev2, Built by MinGW-Builds project) 14.2.0'
using C++ compiler: 'G__~1.EXE (x86_64-posix-seh-rev2, Built by MinGW-Builds project) 14.2.0'
make: pkg-config: No such file or directory
g++ -std=gnu++17  -I"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-45~1.0/include" -DNDEBUG -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0600 -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/later/include' -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/Rcpp/include'   -I"c:/rtools45/x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix/include"    -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS   -O2 -Wall  -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -mstackrealign    -c RcppExports.cpp -o RcppExports.o
g++ -std=gnu++17  -I"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-45~1.0/include" -DNDEBUG -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0600 -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/later/include' -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/Rcpp/include'   -I"c:/rtools45/x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix/include"    -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS   -O2 -Wall  -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -mstackrealign    -c callback.cpp -o callback.o
g++ -std=gnu++17  -I"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-45~1.0/include" -DNDEBUG -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0600 -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/later/include' -I'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/Rcpp/include'   -I"c:/rtools45/x86_64-w64-mingw32.static.posix/include"    -DSTRICT_R_HEADERS   -O2 -Wall  -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -mstackrealign    -c callbackqueue.cpp -o callbackqueue.o
In file included from tqueue.h:7,
                 from callbackqueue.h:4,
                 from callbackqueue.cpp:2:
thread.h:4:10: fatal error: uv.h: No such file or directory
    4 | #include <uv.h>
      |          ^~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-45~1.0/etc/x64/Makeconf:296: callbackqueue.o] Error 1
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'httpuv'
* removing 'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/httpuv'
* restoring previous 'C:/Program Files/R/R-4.5.0/library/httpuv'
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘httpuv’ had non-zero exit status

Session info

R version 4.5.0 (2025-04-11 ucrt)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64
Running under: Windows 11 x64 (build 26100)

Matrix products: default
  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.utf8  LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8    LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                           LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8    

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_4.5.0    tools_4.5.0       rstudioapi_0.17.1

EDIT 1

I used the pak package to install the package and it worked. What I did was pak::pkg_install(httpuv, dependencies = TRUE). I don't know why it worked.