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

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

On 14 May 2025 at 09:12, Stephen Bond wrote:
| 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?

It's a personal preference but I tend to set things up such that I have no
user-local directory, and that has worked for a few decades now:

  $ Rscript -e 'print(.libPaths())'
  [1] "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library" "/usr/lib/R/site-library"       "/usr/lib/R/library"           
  $ 

If one likes to have one it is still possibly to skip either or both of the
architecture and the version part, see eg /etc/R/Renviron* and the hint about
the help(Startup) page.

| 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.

It is hard to get an official word. I think R Core still 'recommends it' just
to start from a clean plate, but I know from my Debian packaging work that it
is (generally) not a requirement as R Core is so careful about not removing
things from the ABI.  Packages build under older R generally just work, which
is a good thing. (Packages built under newer R get you a warning 'built under
X.Y ...'.)  So for me no need for a forced rebuild and installation of all
packages. 

Best, Dirk

-- 
dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org