ESS not installable (Ubuntu 18.04)

Question

The day before yesterday, I have experienced my Ubuntu package ess (Version: 17.11-3bionic0) no more configuring properly during apt-get update. I then tried apt-get install -d ess and:

dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/ess_17.11-3bionic0_all.deb 

I get:

Preparing to unpack .../ess_17.11-3bionic0_all.deb ...
Remove ess for emacs25
remove/ess: purging byte-compiled files for emacs25
Unpacking ess (17.11-3bionic0) over (17.11-3bionic0) ...
Setting up ess (17.11-3bionic0) ...
Install emacsen-common for emacs25
emacsen-common: Handling install of emacsen flavor emacs25
Install ess for emacs25
install/ess: Handling install for emacsen flavor emacs25
ERROR: install script from ess package failed
dpkg: error processing package ess (--install):
installed ess package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for install-info (6.5.0.dfsg.1-2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ess

I am using Ubuntu 18.04 with GNU Emacs 25.2.2.

Looking in the emacs package manager, it says:

  ess                17.11         incompat   melpa-s... Emacs Speaks Statistics

So, it seems that the package from melpa is uninstallable because of being incompatible with my current Ubuntu emacs version, and the Ubuntu package of the same version can neither be installed.

I have tried this solution from Ubuntu SX but it didn't work for me.

What else can I do now?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

For sake of completeness. A look at ESS on GitHub or r-sig-debian required me to download:

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/tmp/elpa-ess_17.11-4_all.deb

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/tmp/ess_17.11-4_all.deb

and to install them via:

dpkg -i ess_17.11-4_all.deb elpa-ess_17.11-4_all.deb

Works for me on 18.04.

Edit: The CRAN repository has been updated accordingly. So, the above procedure is now only needed if you do not want to use the package manager for this.