The synapser package has low level dependencies like
openssl, zlib and the development version of curl. These are usually
provided in linux installations but if you are using the r-base Docker
image (https://hub.docker.com/_/r-base/) they are not included.
The following Dockerfile ensures the required dependencies are in place
and also installs synapser.
FROM r-base
RUN rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/default
RUN apt-get update -y
RUN apt-get install -y dpkg-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libffi-dev
RUN apt-get install -y curl libcurl4-openssl-dev
RUN R -e "install.packages('synapser', repos=c('http://ran.synapse.org', 'http://cran.fhcrc.org'))"