[R] building from source after installing binary package

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 6 May 2005, Uwe Ligges wrote:

> Diaz.Ramon wrote:
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> I've got into the habit of installing R from the precompiled Debian 
>> binaries, including many of the packages from the r-cran-* Debian packages, 
>> and later building from source (e.g., to link against Goto's BLAS, or to 
>> build patched versions, etc). I install the newly built R to the very same 
>> place (/usr/lib/R). This allows me to build and update R when I wish, AND 
>> provides the ease of quickly updating many packages.
>> 
>> Things have always worked fine, but after a few funny problems (which could 
>> be unrelated to the process itself) I've started wondering if this is a 
>> rather silly thing to do, and if I should keep my own build separate from 
>> the Debian stuff. Any advice would be much appreciated.
>
>
> Yes, simply install to another directory, e.g. by telling configure:
>
> ./configure --prefix=/I/want/to/have/R/installed/here

I don't think that is the point: Ramon must have done that as the default 
installation place is /usr/local/lib/R.

I think this is a Debian-specific question (there is a R-debian list) and 
the point may be to make use of the binary Debian packages.  I would 
advocate installing R from the sources into /usr/local, and having
separate directory trees both for packages you install and for Debian 
packages.  Then you can manipulate which packages are seen via R_LIBS.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595