R help - Oct 2015 - Installing different R versions

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

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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.

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.
>
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