[R] installation of R on Linux

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Daniel Nordlund wrote:

> R-users,
>
> I am new user of Linux (have been using Win XP Pro) and wanted to 
> install R.  Since I am just beginning to learn Linux I was wondering, 
> where in the directory structure do users of Linux usually install R? 
> Most of the instructions I have read simply say to untar the tarball 
> where you want to install the program.  Any suggestions would be welcome 
> as to an appropriate place.  I know I could get an rpm, but wanted to 
> use this as a learning process for a variety of skills.  Currently 
> working with SuSE 9.1

There is a definitive set of instructions, in the file INSTALL in 
the tarball and at

https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/INSTALL

Unpacking and installing are separate operations.  There is more 
information in the R-admin manual (which you already have in a Windows 
version of R, and is also in the tarball).

What most of us do is to untar in any convenient place (I use ~/R), use 
configure, make, and then use 'make install' to >install< R.  This 
installs in /usr/local in the conventional subdirectories (and 
conventionally needs su to access).  Having installed, you can wipe out 
the unpacked version of the tarball.

So, in my example

cd ~/R
tar zxf R-2.2.1.tar.gz
cd R-2.2.1
configure
make
make info pdf
su
make install install-info install-pdf
[leave su shell]
cd ..
rm -rf R-2.2.1

Rehash and start R.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595