[R] Installing R on Linux is easy. (was Re: Pros and Cons of R)

[Patrick Connolly]

On Thu, 22-May-2008 at 09:28PM +0200, Hans Ekbrand wrote:

|> On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 02:07:01PM -0400, R P Herrold wrote:
|> > On Thu, 22 May 2008, Monica Pisica wrote:
|> 
|> [...]
|> 
|> > >When a new R version is in place you 
|> > >cannot up-grade your old R version, you have to do a new 
|> > >installation and re-load all the packages you used to have 
|> > >and delete / un-install the old version....
|> > 
|> > ummm -- this is of course a function of the package manager 
|> > and operating system being used, and not of R intrinsicly; 
|> > under an RPM package manager, this issue is not present
|> 
|> Neither under .deb based OS:es such as Ubuntu and Debian.

I don't see in this discussion a mention of how easy it is to install
R on Linux from source.  The instructions are very clear and simple.

With three simple steps, it's easy to install one version in the
background while you're still using the previous one.  With judicious
arrangement of libraries, it's unnecessary to reinstall the packages
every time you install a new version, and it's simple to have multiple
versions of R on the same computer.  I don't know how one would keep
two or more versions of Genstat (say) on the same computer.

If it is desired to update the packages, that's ridiculously simple
also. 


-- 
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   ___    Patrick Connolly   
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