[R-sig-Debian] Having both R-current and R-devel installed on Ubuntu

[Michael Rutter]

On 08/08/2012 05:22 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
>
> Hi Søren,
>
> On 8 August 2012 at 20:38, Søren Højsgaard wrote:
> | Dear List,
> |
> | Having used R on Windows for years, I have recently installed Ubuntu as a virtual machine. I admit that I am quite new to the linux world.
>
> Good :)  It's even better once you "host" on Linux as Linux is generally
> better with limited resources.
>
> | Installing R (current version = 2.15.1) went smoothly, but I would like to have both the current version of R and R-devel installed. I've searched the net for info on doing this but so far without luck.
>
> I hope you found the README on CRAN to get you the prebuilt version. That is
> the way many of us find most convenient to get "r-release" up and going.
>
> | Can anyone help me getting this up and running?
> |
> | A related question: How do I upgrade the current version of R to the patched versions?
>
> R-devel and R-patched can only be had from source, and not from a .deb
> because I never reorganised the packaging to allow for multiple versions.
>
> But because CRAN makes us check against R-devel, it is of use to have it.  So
> I keep a svn checkout and every few weeks build locally via a little script
> which carries over a few of the configuration choices I make for the Debian /
> Ubuntu package (plus memory debugging from when Doug and I were chasing
> something).  Followed by 'make install', this puts R into /usr/local/lib/R-devel
> which is then completely off the PATH and does not affect normal R.
>
> I then use this via a second script ~/bin/R-devel.sh which calls it. Also
> below.

One other tip that will be useful if you are building R for the first 
time on an Ubuntu box.  There are many build dependencies that are 
needed, and you could spend time finding them every time "make" fails. 
Or, you can run this first:

sudo apt-get build-dep r-base

That will install all the build dependencies automatically.

Michael


> Hope this helps, Dirk
>
>
> ## --snip here ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ## ~/bin/build-R-devel
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> cd ~/svn/r-devel
>
> # R_PAPERSIZE=letter				\
> # R_BATCHSAVE="--no-save --no-restore" 		\
> # R_BROWSER=xdg-open				\
> # PAGER=/usr/bin/pager				\
> # PERL=/usr/bin/perl				\
> # R_UNZIPCMD=/usr/bin/unzip			\
> # R_ZIPCMD=/usr/bin/zip				\
> # R_PRINTCMD=/usr/bin/lpr				\
> # LIBnn=lib					\
> # AWK=/usr/bin/awk                                \
> # CC="ccache gcc"					\
> # CFLAGS="-ggdb -pipe -std=gnu99 -Wall -pedantic -DTESTING_WRITE_BARRIER" \
> # CXX="ccache g++"				\
> # CXXFLAGS="-ggdb -std=c++0x -pipe -Wall -pedantic" \
> # FC="ccache gfortran"				\
> # FCFLAGS="-ggdb -pipe -Wall -pedantic"		\
> # F77="ccache gfortran"				\
> # FFLAGS="-ggdb -pipe -Wall -pedantic"		\
> # MAKE="make -j4"					\
> # ./configure 					\
> #     --prefix=/usr/local/lib/R-devel 		\
> #     --enable-R-shlib 				\
> #     --enable-strict-barrier 			\
> #     --with-blas 				\
> #     --with-lapack 				\
> #     --with-readline 				\
> #     --without-recommended-packages
>
> R_PAPERSIZE=letter				\
> R_BATCHSAVE="--no-save --no-restore" 		\
> R_BROWSER=xdg-open				\
> PAGER=/usr/bin/pager				\
> PERL=/usr/bin/perl				\
> R_UNZIPCMD=/usr/bin/unzip			\
> R_ZIPCMD=/usr/bin/zip				\
> R_PRINTCMD=/usr/bin/lpr				\
> LIBnn=lib					\
> AWK=/usr/bin/awk                                \
> CC="ccache gcc"					\
> CFLAGS="-ggdb -pipe -std=gnu99 -Wall -pedantic" \
> CXX="ccache g++"				\
> CXXFLAGS="-ggdb -pipe -Wall -pedantic" 		\
> FC="ccache gfortran"	 	  		\
> F77="ccache gfortran"				\
> MAKE="make -j4"					\
> ./configure 					\
>      --prefix=/usr/local/lib/R-devel 		\
>      --enable-R-shlib 				\
>      --with-blas 				\
>      --with-lapack 				\
>      --with-readline 				\
>      --without-recommended-packages
>
> #CC="clang -O3"                                  \
> #CXX="clang++ -03"				\
>
>
> #make svnonly
> make
>
> echo "*** Done -- now run 'make install'"
>
>
>
>
> ## --snip here ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ## ~/bin/R-devel.sh
>
> #!/bin/bash
>
> export R_LIBS_SITE=${R_LIBS_SITE-'/usr/lib/R-devel/lib/R/library:/usr/local/lib/R/site-library:/usr/lib/R/site-library::/usr/lib/R/library'}
> export PATH="/usr/local/lib/R-devel/bin:$PATH"
> R "$@"
>

-- 
Dr. Michael A. Rutter
School of Science
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
4205 College Drive
Erie, PA 16563
http://math.bd.psu.edu/faculty/rutter
mar36 at psu.edu