R help - May 2020 - Automating package updates after major version change

On Thu, 14 May 2020, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> On the contrary... that is the use case in which it makes the least sense
> to muck with system files. System files are maintained using system
> package management tools which at best lag terribly, while R packages are
> much easier to manage using R's internal package tools with no elevated
> privileges.
Jeff,

I must not be following your thoughts. The slackbuilds.org group maintains a
package for the current R distribution (when the maintainer gets around to
checking that the build script works with the source.) Every library not
provided in the core R distribution I download and install from the local
CRAN mirror.

All Slackware distribution executables are stored in /usr/bin/. Most of the
SBo application packages are also installed there.

Application-specific functions are the province of the user and I let root
download, build, and install R packages.

Regards,

Rich

Running R as root, ever, is a completely unnecessary elevation of privileges...
but that discussion is getting OT as it pertains to OS security and stability
rather than R language.

On May 14, 2020 2:21:43 PM PDT, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com>
wrote:
>On Thu, 14 May 2020, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
>
>> On the contrary... that is the use case in which it makes the least
>sense
>> to muck with system files. System files are maintained using system
>> package management tools which at best lag terribly, while R packages
>are
>> much easier to manage using R's internal package tools with no
>elevated
>> privileges.
>
>Jeff,
>
>I must not be following your thoughts. The slackbuilds.org group
>maintains a
>package for the current R distribution (when the maintainer gets around
>to
>checking that the build script works with the source.) Every library
>not
>provided in the core R distribution I download and install from the
>local
>CRAN mirror.
>
>All Slackware distribution executables are stored in /usr/bin/. Most of
>the
>SBo application packages are also installed there.
>
>Application-specific functions are the province of the user and I let
>root
>download, build, and install R packages.
>
>Regards,
>
>Rich
>
>______________________________________________
>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.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On Thu, 14 May 2020, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> Running R as root, ever, is a completely unnecessary elevation of
> privileges... but that discussion is getting OT as it pertains to OS
> security and stability rather than R language.
Only to upgrade the core package and install/update CRAN packages. All work
is done as a user.

Rich