[R-sig-Debian] Changing R_LIB_USER variable in ubuntu...

[Kenneth Takagi]

Hi,

I'm an experienced R user on windows, but new to linux.  This may be an 
issue with how R (or Ubuntu) was install on my computer, but maybe not. 
   I just installed Ubuntu 10.04, I have administrator privileges and 
am using R 2.11.  Here goes:

I'd like to change the location where R installs packages not included
in the base installation (using install.packages()).  Right now it is
saving them to
"/home/ken/R/i486-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.11" like it should based on
the default R_LIB_USER setting in /etc/R/Renviron.

I think that this is quite a bulky filepath and would prefer to shorten 
it (ie. "~/R/2.11/library").  Unfortunately, /etc/R/ is read only for 
me (as is /usr/R/).  Therefore I can't change the R_LIB_USER variable.  
I understand the rationale behind protecting /etc/ and /usr/, but is 
there any way to customize this variable once and not worry about it 
when I install future packages?

Thank a lot!

Ken