[R-sig-Debian] Debian Testing: ~/.Renviron seems to not being read (R_LIBS not set)

[Marius Hofert]

Hi,

I have Debian Testing running on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1
Carbon (2015, 3rd gen.). I would like to have a package library
independent of the installed R version. Under Ubuntu, I used to
have the following line in ~/.Renviron:
R_LIBS=/usr/local/R/library:/usr/lib/R/site-library This worked
fine and /usr/local/R/library showed up in .libPaths().

However, under Debian (with the same ~/.Renviron), my .libPaths()
just shows "/usr/local/R/R-3.1.3-build/library" which is the
version-dependent library (this used to come at 3rd position in
.libPaths()). Does R on Debian not look for ~/.Renviron? I also
tried R_LIBS_USER but no luck here either (although, as far as I
understand Section 6.2 of "R Installation and Administration",
R_LIBS or R_LIBS_USER should work (?))

Cheers, Marius

PS: I found two sites which seem to be related, but it was still
not quite clear to me how to approach the problem:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-debian/2005-December/000050.html
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-debian/2010-May/001146.html