R SIG Debian - Jan 2019 - r-base is already the newest version (3.5.2-1bionic)

After a great deal of apparently irrelevant kerfuffle, with which I have 
been boring this list, I managed to do:

     sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

without getting error messages.  I was told that there was nothing to 
do.  I then (to make sure?) did:

     sudo apt-get install r-base

and was told:
> r-base is already the newest version (3.5.2-1bionic).
> 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
However when I run R I get version 3.5.1.  I did:

     whereis R

and got:
> /usr/bin/R /usr/lib/R /usr/lib64/R /etc/R /usr/local/lib/R /usr/share >
/usr/share/man/man1/R.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/R.1
I have tried all of the executable R files in the listed locations, and 
with each one of them I get version 3.5.1.

So how do I get 3.5.2 to show up?  There must be *something* simple that 
I can do!  (Dirk:  Can you set me on the path?)

cheers,

Rolf Turner

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276

The silence has been deafening in respect of my latest cri de coeur 
about trying to install R via "sudo apt-get r-base".

I have been thrashing around on my own, and getting nowhere.

What I have tried is removing all traces of the "old" (installed from 
source) R from the system.  I did "whereis R" and then moved all of
the
relevant directories that appeared, into a safe-keeping "repository" 
that I created in my home directory.

I then typed ?R? and got, as expected, ?R: Command not found.?

I then did

  sudo apt purge r-base

and this appeared to work. Next I did

  sudo apt update

and this seemed to run OK; lots of output, but no error messages.

Finally I did

  sudo apt-get install r-base

This too seemed to run without complaint. It *said* it was installing 
r-base 3.5.2:
> Preparing to unpack .../r-base_3.5.2-1bionic_all.deb ...
> Unpacking r-base (3.5.2-1bionic) ...
> Setting up r-base (3.5.2-1bionic) ...

But when, after having done this install, I typed "R" I again got
"R: Command not found."

And typing "whereis R" produced "R:". I.e., nowhere.

The install process does not seem to have produced an executable R.
I don't understand this.

There must be something else that I need to do. What is it?  Can I force 
the install to create the executable?  How?

Can't somebody *please* help me?  I am going mad!

cheers,

Rolf Turner

P.S.  Elsewhere I was advised to trying using "checkinstall" to
install
the old R (i.e. 3.5.1) from source.  This, I was told, would install the 
old R version in such a way that it would be compatible with the "sudo 
apt-get install" paradigm.

After a *great* deal of travail I managed to get

     sudo checkinstall make install

(command issued in the "build directory" for R 3.5.1) to work.  And
work
it did, creating an R executable as well as a *.deb file.

I then thought I'd be able to do:

     sudo apt purge r-base

to get rid of R 3.5.1 (i.e. that which I had just installed) followed by

     sudo apt-get install r-base

to put in R 3.5.2.  It all *appeared* to work; no error messages and 
again it seemed to say that it was installing 3.5.2.

But then I fired up R and just got the 3.5.1 version that I'd just 
installed using "checkinstall".  (The "purge" did *not* get
rid of the
executable and the infrastructure on which the executable depends. And 
the "sudo apt-get install r-base" command apparently did *not* create 
new infrastructure.)

Why does the universe *do* these things to me???

R. T.


-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276

Rolf,

I think it may help to read-up on dpkg and apt. Instead of 'whereis' do

  dpkg -l r-base-core

to see the content of that package.  Use

  apt-cache policy r-base-core

to see what the package cache says about where it gets the package from. And
so on.  Also

  type -p R
  which R

will tell where your system thinks R comes from. If you install R 3.5.2 you
should not see R 3.5.1.

These aren't really R issues. The package management system can be pure
source of joy. Something seems to have gotten crossed at your end but we
cannot tell what.

Dirk

-- 
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org