I've tried installing the package hdf5r using the following commands but keep getting the same error. A few of the solutions I've seen required using homebrew to install hdf5r but I don't have admin rights to my computer. Is there any way around this?

devtools::install_github("hhoeflin/hdf5r")
BiocManager::install("hdf5r", force = TRUE)
install.packages("hdf5r")

sessionInfo( )

Downloading GitHub repo hhoeflin/hdf5r@HEAD
✓  checking for file ‘/private/var/folders/b1/krm1hg590k76jrh0_qrvwrndc6b2h6/T/RtmpwOND6T/remotes62049d3d00e/hhoeflin-hdf5r-5c9074f/DESCRIPTION’ ...
─  preparing ‘hdf5r’: (510ms)
✓  checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ...
─  cleaning src
─  running ‘cleanup’
─  checking for LF line-endings in source and make files and shell scripts (426ms)
─  checking for empty or unneeded directories
─  building ‘hdf5r_1.3.3.tar.gz’
   Warning in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...) :
     one argument not used by format 'invalid uid value replaced by that for user 'nobody''
   Warning: invalid uid value replaced by that for user 'nobody'
   Warning in sprintf(gettext(fmt, domain = domain), ...) :
     one argument not used by format 'invalid gid value replaced by that for user 'nobody''
   Warning: invalid gid value replaced by that for user 'nobody'

Installing package into ‘/Users/pererasn/Library/R/x86_64/4.1/library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
* installing *source* package ‘hdf5r’ ...
** using staged installation
checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /usr/bin/sed
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... no
checking for nawk... no
checking for awk... awk
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking for h5cc... no
checking for h5pcc... no
checking for HDF5 libraries... no
configure: WARNING:
Unable to locate HDF5 compilation helper scripts 'h5cc' or 'h5pcc'.
Please specify --with-hdf5=<LOCATION> as the full path to h5cc or h5pcc.
HDF5 support is being disabled (equivalent to --with-hdf5=no).

configure: error: hdf5 does not seem to be installed on your platform.
  Please install the hdf5 library.
  The required HDF5 library files can be installed as follows:
      - Debian-based (e.g. Debian >= 8.0, Ubuntu >= 15.04): 'sudo apt-get install libhdf5-dev'
        - Old Debian-based (e.g Debian < 8.0, Ubuntu < 15.04): Install from source (see INSTALL)
        - OS X using Homebrew: 'brew install hdf5'
        - RPM-based (e.g Fedora): 'sudo yum install hdf5-devel'
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘hdf5r’
* removing ‘/Users/pererasn/Library/R/x86_64/4.1/library/hdf5r’
Warning message:
In i.p(...) :
  installation of package ‘/var/folders/b1/krm1hg590k76jrh0_qrvwrndc6b2h6/T//RtmpwOND6T/file62052f4134e/hdf5r_1.3.3.tar.gz’ had non-zero exit status
> install.packages("hdf5r")
Installing package into ‘/Users/pererasn/Library/R/x86_64/4.1/library’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Package which is only available in source form, and may need compilation of C/C++/Fortran: ‘hdf5r’
Do you want to attempt to install these from sources? (Yes/no/cancel) Yes
installing the source package ‘hdf5r’

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/hdf5r_1.3.3.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 2217906 bytes (2.1 MB)
==================================================
downloaded 2.1 MB

* installing *source* package ‘hdf5r’ ...
** package ‘hdf5r’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
** using staged installation
checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /usr/bin/sed
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... no
checking for nawk... no
checking for awk... awk
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/bin/grep
checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... /usr/bin/grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking for h5cc... no
checking for h5pcc... no
checking for HDF5 libraries... no
configure: WARNING:
Unable to locate HDF5 compilation helper scripts 'h5cc' or 'h5pcc'.
Please specify --with-hdf5=<LOCATION> as the full path to h5cc or h5pcc.
HDF5 support is being disabled (equivalent to --with-hdf5=no).

configure: error: hdf5 does not seem to be installed on your platform.
  Please install the hdf5 library.
  The required HDF5 library files can be installed as follows:
      - Debian-based (e.g. Debian >= 8.0, Ubuntu >= 15.04): 'sudo apt-get install libhdf5-dev'
        - Old Debian-based (e.g Debian < 8.0, Ubuntu < 15.04): Install from source (see INSTALL)
        - OS X using Homebrew: 'brew install hdf5'
        - RPM-based (e.g Fedora): 'sudo yum install hdf5-devel'
ERROR: configuration failed for package ‘hdf5r’
* removing ‘/Users/pererasn/Library/R/x86_64/4.1/library/hdf5r’
Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘hdf5r’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
    ‘/private/var/folders/b1/krm1hg590k76jrh0_qrvwrndc6b2h6/T/RtmpwOND6T/downloaded_packages’

This support site is for question about Bioconductor packages and hdf5r is not part of Bioconductor.

One way around this is to use rhdf5, which is part of Bioconductor and doesn't require installing external libraries via Homebrew.

Another way around is to install the pre-compiled hdf5r binary for Mac that is available on CRAN. Note that installing binaries when they are available is almost always a better option than trying to compile packages locally. It will spare you any compilation/linking headaches and will be much faster.

If you have further questions about hdf5r, please address them directly to the authors/maintainers of the package. For questions specific to R on macOS, you might want to check the R-SIG-Mac mailing list.