R: rJava package install failing

That is how I make it work :

In Linux (Ubuntu 16.04 and 20.04 worked confirmed)

sudo apt-get install default-jre
sudo apt-get install default-jdk
sudo R CMD javareconf

in R:

install.packages("rJava")

Wouldn't

apt-get install r-cran-rjava

have been easier? You could have asked me at useR! :)

Turns out my problem was an issue with my JAVA_HOME environment variable. Yes, shocking I know. My initial setting for PATH and JAVA_HOME looked like this:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

And I added /jre so it now looks like this:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

Everything in Java seemed to work fine without the /jre but rJava would not. Odd.