[R-sig-Debian] Can't install R 2.15 and r-recommended on Ubuntu

[Kirill Müller]

On 11/08/2013 12:17 AM, Michael Rutter wrote:
>
> All the packages that you need are on the Ubuntu CRAN site (I 
> believe), the trick is convincing Ubuntu to install the correct ones.  
> One solution would be to ge here:
>
> http://cran.us.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/precise/
>
> Manually download the packages you need.  Look for dates around March 
> 2, 2013.  That is the was the day 2.15.3 was created for Ubuntu.  Once 
> you have downloaded the packages, install them using "dpkg".
>
> Michael
>
Thanks a lot to everyone for the useful input. Indeed, CRAN/Ubuntu 
indeed contains packages "old enough" to run on R 2.15. The desired 
configuration can be achieved with aptitude and a modification in its 
conflict resolution heuristics:

sudo aptitude install -R -y r-base-dev=2.15.3-1precise0precise1 
r-base-core=2.15.3-1precise0precise1 
r-recommended=2.15.3-1precise0precise1 -o 
"Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Non-Default-Level=5000"

This works in principle, but needs more tweaking to be more robust, 
especially w.r.t. apt-get update calls.


Cheers

Kirill