[R] Installing different R versions

[Loris Bennett]

Dear Luca,

Luca Cerone <luca.cerone at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear all,
> on one shared machine we have an older R version installed. Some packages
> have known issues with that version that are fixed in newer R versions.
>
> Since that is a production machine with many jobs running we would like to
> keep things as they are. However I would also like to keep advantage of the
> newest version and the bug fixes introduced.
>
> What would be the best way to install a newer version along the one that
> already exists? Is it possible to install it for a specific user only?
>
> Cheers,
> Luca

If you are on a Unix-like platform, a standard way of dealing with
multiple versions of a piece of software installed in parallel is
"Environment Modules":

http://modules.sourceforge.net/

Packages for various Linux distributions are available.

You could make a version available for a specific user by setting
appropriate file permissions of the module file which is used to set up
the environment.  However, I would consider this a somewhat unusual
configuration.  If you are worried about people using the wrong version
by mistake, you can either have the standard version available without
using modules, or you can define a default version within the modules
setup.

HTH

Loris

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