[Rd] maintaining multiple R versions

[Paul Gilbert]

Aaron

For the problem I had in mind, changing a couple of environment 
variables does not seem like more work than this,  but it may solve a 
bigger problem than the one I was thinking about. If I understand 
correctly, you can use this to switch among versions of R, similar to 
what I am doing and still with versions in different directories found 
by a PATH setting. But, in addition, it is also possible that the R 
versions were compiled with different gcc and other tools, as long as 
those are still installed on the system.  Does it also work if you 
upgrade the OS and have newer versions of system libraries, etc, or do 
you then need to recompile the R versions?

Thanks,
Paul

On 13-01-18 02:58 PM, Aaron A. King wrote:
> Have you looked at Environment Modules (http://modules.sourceforge.net/)?  I use it to maintain multiple versions of R.  Users can choose their default and switch among them at the command line.
>
> Aaron
>
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 02:04:13PM -0500, Paul Gilbert wrote:
>> (somewhat related to thread [Rd] R CMD check not reading R_LIBS )
>>
>> For many years I have maintained R versions by building R
>> (./configure ; make)  in a directory indicating the version number,
>> putting the directory/bin on my path, and setting R_LIBS_SITE.
>>
>> It seems only one version can easily be installing in /usr/bin, and
>> in any case that requires root, so I do not do that. There may be an
>> advantage to installing somewhere in a directory with the version
>> number, but that does not remove the need to set my path. (If there
>> is an advantage to installing I would appreciate someone explaining
>> briefly what it is.)
>>
>> My main question is whether there is a better ways to maintaining
>> multiple versions, in some way that lets users choose which one they
>> are using?
>>
>> (The only problem I am aware of with my current way of doing this is:
>> if the system has some R in /usr/bin then I have to set my preferred
>> version first, which means shell commands like "man" find R's pager
>> first, and do not work.)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Paul
>>
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>