[R] No "doc" directory in my installation of R.

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Rolf,

Sorry for only briefly chiming in, and late, but I don't usually follow
r-help that much these days.

I am writing this from an Ubuntu machine running R as well as RStudio from
pre-made binary .deb packages. R comes via apt from CRAN (using Michael's
binaries), RStudio from them via helper scripts in a package of mine:

  edd using rob:~$ dpkg -l | grep "r-base-core\|rstudio\|rstudio-server" | cut -c-79
  ii  r-base-core                                4.1.0-1.2104.0                  
  ii  rstudio                                    2021-07.0.270                   
  ii  rstudio-server                             2021-07.0.270                   
  edd using rob:~$

Contrary to what you wrote, RStudio *will* use whichever binary it finds
first in the path, just like any other Unix tool.  So when I do

   $ rstudio

I get R 4.1.0 from the binary above, but if I opt into my locally compiled
R-devel via a standard PATH prefix then

   $ PATH=/usr/local/lib/R-devel/bin/:$PATH rstudio

RStudio happily runs with R-devel.

Next, "doc/". This has been in /usr/share/R for probably well over a decade
on these Debian system; almost all other packages on Linux distros also split
between binary ("architecture-specific") directories (such as lib/) and
binary-independent ones (such as share/).

And by the way, in R you can do call R.home() with an argument to see:

   > R.home("doc")
   [1] "/usr/share/R/doc"
   > R.home("library")
   [1] "/usr/lib/R/library"
   > 

Of course, you are free to use whichever R installation and configuration
*you* mind most suitable. It is after all your machine.  But quite a few of
us are happy with these official binaries.

Lastly, and I we may have mentioned this to you before, a dedicated mailing
lists for 'R on Debian + Ubuntu' exists (in r-sig-debian at the usual ETH
server) and you might have gotten useful answers sooner.

Anyway, you are set now, so enjoy R!

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
https://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd using debian.org