R-Project

The R-project offers several installation possibilities for Ubuntu.

• Oddly, the Synaptic package manager shows sections for GNU R statistical system (universe) and GNU R statistical system (multiverse), where many extensions are available, but the r-base packages are in the Mathematics (universe) section. The package r-base-dev needed for compiling contributed packages not available compiled in cran is in the Development (universe) section.
• cran has a UBUNTU PACKAGES FOR R README page. It recommends using
  • sudo apt-get install r-base for the basic application, or
  • sudo apt-get install r-base-dev to install the extensible basic application
  • , after adding an authorized path to a repository in your /etc/apt/sources.list file, such as
  • deb http://<my.favorite.cran.mirror>/bin/linux/ubuntu maverick/ or …
  • replacing <my.favorite.cran.mirror> by the actual URL of your favorite CRAN mirror. See http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html for the list of CRAN mirrors.

Unfortunately, the packages available for Maverick are over a year old : R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)

My chosen alternative was to download the current version from http://www.r-project.org/ having chosen a nearby mirror from http://cran.r-roject.org/mirrors.html. I then did not choose the Download R for Linux from the Download and Install R box, but the download source code for all platforms Current release from the second box.

The next step is to build and install it. The instructions for this are not placed where they are obviously easy to find. I found them by following the “Manuals” link on the home page, then the link to either html or pdf for “R Installation and Administration.” Briefly, the build is classic:

1. untar the archive somewhere, like /usr/local/src
2. ./configure : to prepare the make configuration. In my case, I had to install a Fortran compiler before building.
3. make
4. make check
5. various other makes, for the documentation and installation of a symlink. ¹⁾

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