[R-sig-Debian] How to upgrade from 2.15.1 to 2.15.1 patched?

[George N. White III]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 12:12 PM, Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian.org> wrote:
>
> On 22 September 2012 at 18:54, Marius Hofert wrote:
> | Hi,
> |
> | I would like to upgrade R-2.15.1 to R-2.15.1 patched (under Ubuntu 12.04). What's
> | the recommended way to do so?
> |
> | I did the following steps for installing R under Ubuntu 12.04 (as far as I
> | remember, Dirk Eddelbuettel recommended this and helped me on several occasions
> | with the installation):
> |
> | 1) sudo emacs /etc/apt/sources.list
> | 2) add:
> |    deb http://stat.ethz.ch/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu precise/
> | 3) do:
> |    gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9
> |    gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -
> | 4) do:
> |    sudo apt-get update
> |    sudo apt-get install r-base
>
> We generally follow R Core releases, and the packaged versions are the actual
> releases.
>
> In other words, there are no .deb packages I am aware of that contain patch
> releases.

I've been in the same pickle (e.g., a patched bug is affecting my
work) a very few
times.  I don't mind building R-patched from source every once and a
while.   If you
are able to install source packages you probably won't need much more
(if any) work
to build R from scratch, and it is satisfying to know that you really
can "use the
source"(TM) when the need arises.   The hard work of figuring out the
appropriate
compilers and options has already been done and is recorded in the Makeconf
files, and can be copied into a "config.site" file.

You can install the patched version somewhere that won't affect the debian
packaged version (e.g., /opt/R-project/) and install (current versions
of) libraries
you are using.


-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia