[Rd] use one custom package with multiple R versions?

[Andrew Piskorski]

I'd like to install several different versions of R from source.  I'm
doing this on Ubuntu Linux 6.06 Dapper x86-64, which ships with R
2.2.1, so the versions of R I want to use are (for now) 2.2.1, 2.4.x,
and the development head.

Fetching the sources with Subversion and running configure with
something like "--prefix=/usr/local/R-2.4-branch-20061130" is
straightforward, but are there any other best practices I should be
aware of for using multiple R installs?

In particular, I wonder how to best handle my custom R packages, some
of which contain compiled C or Fortran.  Is it safe to use only ONE
copy of each of my packages for all versions of R, or do I need a
separate version of each package for each R version?

If I do need a separate package per version of R, is it possible (and
advisable?) to manage that from a single source tree, or am I forced
to have multiple source working copies?

(I see that R CMD INSTALL has a "--with-package-versions" option, but
I think that's about using multiple versions of a package with one
version of R, while I want the vice versa.)

Thanks!

-- 
Andrew Piskorski <atp at piskorski.com>
http://www.piskorski.com/