[R-sig-Debian] Outdated r-base-core when installing on Ubuntu 14.04

[Matthew Simpson]

I have a chromebook with a fresh minimal install of Ubuntu 14.04 running
through crouton, and I'm trying to install the latest version of R. The
only thing I have done to the system before trying to install R is install
gedit. When I try to install R I get an unmet dependencies error that
complains that the version of r-base-core available isn't new enough.

I followed the instructions at
https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README.html to install R. Here
is precisely what I did:

1) after installing gedit, I added the following two lines to
/etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://cran.wustl.edu/bin/linux/ubuntu trusty/
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ trusty-backports main restricted
universe

(Note: I've tried a couple different R mirrors and it doesn't affect
anything as far as I can
tell)

2) Add Michael Rutter's key with

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E084DAB9

3) Update sources and attempt to install R:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install r-base

Here is the full text of the error I get:

sudo apt-get install r-base
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 r-base : Depends: r-base-core (>= 3.2.4-revised-1trusty0) but it is not
going to be installed
          Depends: r-recommended (= 3.2.4-revised-1trusty0) but it is not
going to be installed
          Recommends: r-base-html but it is not going to be installed
          Recommends: r-doc-html but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.


Using sudo apt-cache showpkg <package> reveals that apt is attempting to
install r-base 3.2.4, but only has access to r-base-core 3.0.2.  It does
have access to r-recommended, r-base-html, and r-doc-html all version 3.2.4
though.

I could probably live with R 3.0.2, but sudo apt-get install r-base=3.0.2
yields a similar error complaining that it needs r-recommended 3.0.2, but
it won't be installed.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Matt Simpson

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