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

[Michael Rutter]

On 05/29/2010 11:44 PM, Kenneth Takagi wrote:
> 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?

Ken,

When I install packages in R using Ubunutu, I always use 'sudo'.

[command line]sudo R

...R launches...
 >install.packages("foo")

That will install the packages in a /usr directory and all users on the 
machine will have access to them.

If that is not what you are looking for, let us know.

Michael