curl package not available for several R packages
Just ran into the same issue, this is the solution I found:
Since just installing libcurl4-openssl-dev removes all the r-base packages what I did was
sudo apt-get install libcurl4-openssl-dev r-baseand afterwards
R -q -e "install.packages(c('curl'))"and it worked.
Only caveat is that it upgrades your R version, but if you are already using the latest one then its not an issue.
You are attempting to compile from source. That sometimes has so-called build dependencies. You are missing them, and you are overlooking the (somewhat clear) error messages to that extend because you are getting swamped by multiple installations.
So first tip, so it one package at a time.
Second tip: realize that many (if not all) of these are available within Ubuntu. So just do
sudo apt install r-cran-curlto install e.g. curl. Ditto for the others.
Third tip: There are over 3000 CRAN packages for Ubuntu at Michael's PPA. Read the top ofthis README and then go this PPA (provided you want 3.5 which you do).