Error while installing a tar.gz package in R

Question

When i try to install a R package nlopt-2.4.2.tar.gz from http://ab-initio.mit.edu/nlopt/nlopt-2.4.2.tar.gz , using sudo R CMD INSTALL nlopt-2.4.2.tar.gz,
I get the following Error :

Error in untar2(tarfile, files, list, exdir, restore_times) :
unsupported entry type ‘’

Answer 1

It's not an R package!

If you perform the tar, zip dance:

tar xvfz nlopt-2.4.2.tar.gz

and look at the README, you get:

NLopt is a library for nonlinear local and global optimization, for functions with and without gradient information. It is designed as as simple, unified interface and packaging of several free/open-source nonlinear optimization libraries.

The latest release and a complete manual may be found at the NLopt home page: http://ab-initio.mit.edu/nlopt

It is compiled and installed with the standard GNU autoconf/automake commands:

./configure
make
make install

-- snip --