[R] Determine package version in R

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Chris,

On 21 October 2008 at 11:54, cddesjar wrote:
| 
| I have two versions of the lattice package installed on my computer.  One is
| at /usr/local/lib/R/site-library and the other one is at /usr/lib/R/library. 
| The one at the former location is the newer version and the one that I want
| to make sure get's loaded for my class.  The reason that I have two versions
| installed is that the one in /usr/lib/R/library came in when I installed R
| in Debian, whereas the one in /usr/local/lib/R/site-library is one that I
| got from CRAN.

Call library() in your R session; you should get the one from /usr/local
first as that path is searched.

| How can I check to make sure that this version gets loaded or should I just
| run R CMD INSTALL lattice-x.y.z.tar.gz to /usr/lib/R/library?

That would mean cheating on the package system.  Not a great strategy.

When I want the newer packages in /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/, I simply do
not install the corresponding r-cran-* packages.  This may require
uninstalling (ie remove or purge) r-recommended and r-base.  Both are
'meta-packages' that pull in, respectively, the recommended CRAN packages 
as well as r-base-core and some doc packages.   If you know what you're
doing, and feel comfortable doing so, you may just stay with r-base-core,
r-base-dev, r-mathlib and which doc packages.  

This question would have been well suited for r-sig-debian.

Dirk

-- 
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.