check out the official document *R Installation and Administration* from https://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html There you'll find how to define a specific path for each installation. (Since a number of years I administrate multiple versions of R at different platforms, of course including Linux) Wolfgang 2015-10-07 9:04 GMT+02:00 Loris Bennett <loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de>:> Dear Luca, > > Luca Cerone <luca.cerone at gmail.com> writes: > > > Dear all, > > on one shared machine we have an older R version installed. Some packages > > have known issues with that version that are fixed in newer R versions. > > > > Since that is a production machine with many jobs running we would like > to > > keep things as they are. However I would also like to keep advantage of > the > > newest version and the bug fixes introduced. > > > > What would be the best way to install a newer version along the one that > > already exists? Is it possible to install it for a specific user only? > > > > Cheers, > > Luca > > If you are on a Unix-like platform, a standard way of dealing with > multiple versions of a piece of software installed in parallel is > "Environment Modules": > > http://modules.sourceforge.net/ > > Packages for various Linux distributions are available. > > You could make a version available for a specific user by setting > appropriate file permissions of the module file which is used to set up > the environment. However, I would consider this a somewhat unusual > configuration. If you are worried about people using the wrong version > by mistake, you can either have the standard version available without > using modules, or you can define a default version within the modules > setup. > > HTH > > Loris > > -- > This signature is currently under construction. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Dear Loris and Wolfgang, thanks a lot for the help! I wasn't aware of the module project. I'd rather use the "official" way of having co-existent R versions in this case, but is a good tool to know! Thanks again for the help! Cheers, Luca On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Wolfgang Raffelsberger <wolfgang.raffelsberger at gmail.com> wrote:> check out the official document > *R Installation and Administration* > from https://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html > There you'll find how to define a specific path for each installation. > > (Since a number of years I administrate multiple versions of R at different > platforms, of course including Linux) > > Wolfgang > > 2015-10-07 9:04 GMT+02:00 Loris Bennett <loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de>: > >> Dear Luca, >> >> Luca Cerone <luca.cerone at gmail.com> writes: >> >> > Dear all, >> > on one shared machine we have an older R version installed. Some packages >> > have known issues with that version that are fixed in newer R versions. >> > >> > Since that is a production machine with many jobs running we would like >> to >> > keep things as they are. However I would also like to keep advantage of >> the >> > newest version and the bug fixes introduced. >> > >> > What would be the best way to install a newer version along the one that >> > already exists? Is it possible to install it for a specific user only? >> > >> > Cheers, >> > Luca >> >> If you are on a Unix-like platform, a standard way of dealing with >> multiple versions of a piece of software installed in parallel is >> "Environment Modules": >> >> http://modules.sourceforge.net/ >> >> Packages for various Linux distributions are available. >> >> You could make a version available for a specific user by setting >> appropriate file permissions of the module file which is used to set up >> the environment. However, I would consider this a somewhat unusual >> configuration. If you are worried about people using the wrong version >> by mistake, you can either have the standard version available without >> using modules, or you can define a default version within the modules >> setup. >> >> HTH >> >> Loris >> >> -- >> This signature is currently under construction. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Dear Luca, Luca Cerone <luca.cerone at gmail.com> writes:> Dear Loris and Wolfgang, > thanks a lot for the help! > > I wasn't aware of the module project. I'd rather use the "official" > way of having co-existent R versions in this case, > but is a good tool to know!As far as I can tell from a quick look, "R Installation and Administration", as referred to by Wolfgang, just tells you how to install different versions in different places by using the configuration option --prefix (for Linux at least). This is some thing you always have to do, if you want to install several versions in parallel. However, once you have multiple versions installed, you need a mechanism to allow users to choose between them. This is where Environment Modules come in. At the simplest level, they just allow environment variables to be set and unset in an easy and consistent way. So it is not a question of "using the 'official' way of having co-existent R versions", but rather of installing various versions and then enabling people to choose easily between them. Or have I missed some intrinsic feature of R which will allow me to switch between installed versions without having to explicitly tweak environment variables? Cheers, Loris -- This signature is currently under construction.