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

[Stephen Bond]

Folks,

Sorry to bother you, but I have bad news. Normal R packages work, but
keras and tensorflow keep crashing. After 2 hours of trying to
reinstall I still have nothing.

can anybody suggest a way to install tensorflow and keras under 4.5?
(let me know if I should be posting in a different forum.)

I am pasting the script that used to work under 4.4

```
if(!requireNamespace("remotes")) install.packages("remotes")

remotes::update_packages()
remotes::install_cran(c("readr", "tibble", "zip", "fs", "listarrays"))
install.packages("reticulate")
reticulate::miniconda_uninstall()
unlink("~/.pyenv", recursive = TRUE)
unlink("~/.virtualenvs/r-reticulate", recursive = TRUE)
python <- reticulate::install_python("3.12.3")
reticulate::virtualenv_create("r-reticulate", python = python)
install.packages("keras") # keras3
install.packages("tensorflow")

keras::install_keras(  envname = "r-reticulate", # keras3
  extra_packages = c("keras-tuner", "ipython", "kaggle"))
```
if keras is replaced with keras3 then the install will finish, but it
keeps crashing when I try to run code.
I also discovered that google colab made it very difficult to install
keras in colab. maybe keras is meant to be on python only??

Thanks everybody

On Wed, 2025-05-14 at 08:36 -0500, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> 
> 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
>