[R-sig-Debian] how to install R 4.4

[Stephen Bond]

Hello,

I do not care about version. My packages are in

/home/stephen/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.4/

and and after renaming the 4.4 folder I can load them. 
How do you avoid the version naming of the package folder?

This is not really pressing as even as is the setup is acceptable. I
did not know packages from older versions work on upgraded r-base.
Cheers

On Tue, 2025-05-13 at 18:14 -0500, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> On 13 May 2025 at 18:32, Stephen Bond via R-SIG-Debian wrote:
> > is there a way to get R 4.4 on linux mint with ubuntu 24.04?
> > 
> > I allowed upgrade of packages and that overwrote my 4.4 with 4.5
> > and
> > now i have a huge list of packages, some of which are difficult to
> > install to deal with.
> 
> Well I have been meaning to write a piece about upgrading but ...
> what exactly is
> your issue here, and how can we help?
> 
> For context, I _never_ reinstall R packages when R upgrades (apart,
> of
> course, for changes like R 4.0.0 when we had to).  So in my standard
> place,
> ie /usr/local/lib/R/site-library, a month after R 4.5.0 came, it is
> still a
> healthy mix of packages installed with R 4.5.0, 4.4.*, 4.3.* and
> possibly
> older. They all work.
> 
> Now, back to your question: I am not aware of a repo for Ubuntu that
> mimicks
> snapshot.debian.org giving you all builds. But if you look at
> packages.ubuntu.com and search you get this
>  
> https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=r-base&searchon=names&suite=all&section=all
>  
> indicating 4.4.1 in 24.10 and 4.4.3 in 25.04. Your 24.04 only has
> 4.3.3. But
> read on...
> 
> But if you really think you must use R 4.4.* on Ubuntu 24.04 you can
> always
> compile it locally, as package (ie build a .deb if you know how) or
> into
> /usr/local. But read on...
> 
> All that said, I think it is a non-issue. R 4.5.0 works great on
> 24.04 and
> later _and that is why we offer the backport via CRAN_.
> 
> > following the instructions on
> > https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/fullREADME.html
> > 
> > > To obtain the latest R 4.4 packages, add an entry like
> > > 
> > > deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu noble-cran40/
> > 
> > but that gave me 4.5 again. so, 1) how do I get the 4.4 and 2) how
> > do I
> > stop the automatic upgrades
> 
> To prevent apt and dpkg from upgrading a package, you can place a
> 'hold'. See
> the dpkg documentation (man dpkg) and look for hold. You pass the
> package
> name and the state ("hold") 'piped' to dpkg --set-selection, if I
> remember
> correctly. There are likely some tutorials somewhere.
> 
> Now, given a particular set of apt repos (that is your local admin
> choice
> after all) you can always call 'apt-cache policy r-base-core' to see
> what is
> know. You will likely see r-base-core 4.4.3 still listed.  You *can*
> in fact
> instal that from that CRAN mirror repo by giving an explicit version
> argument
> so
>   sudo apt install r-base-core=4.4.3-1.2404.0
> should work but you likely need to add additional packages there to
> satisfy
> apt ie
>   sudo apt install r-base-core=4.4.3-1.2404.0 r-base-dev=4.4.3-
> 1.2404.0
> and so on.
> 
> After this you must use the 'dpkg hold' trick to not update 4.5.0
> over 4.4.3
> again.
> 
> Dirk
> 
> 
> > thanks everybody
> > stephen
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-SIG-Debian mailing list
> > R-SIG-Debian using r-project.org
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian
>