On Tue, Oct 15, 2013 at 1:15 PM, Paul Johnson <pauljoh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear R Devel > > Some of our R users are still insisting we run R-2.15.3 because of > difficulties with a package called OpenMX. It can't cooperate with new R, > oh well. > > Other users need to run R-3.0.1. I'm looking for the most direct route to > install both, and allow users to choose at runtime. [...]
Since no experts have replied, here's my non-expert opinion (take it as a disclaimer). R is happy to be installed in multiple versions. I have always had several versions of R installed (under Linux). I always compile from source and simply set the appropriate destination directories appropriately, then symlink the R and Rscript executables. In my case I put each version into a separate directory under /usr/local/lib64, for example /usr/local/lib64/R-3.0.2-patched . I put all executables into /usr/local/bin but change their names, e.g. R is called R-3.0.2-patched etc; then symlink the executable that I want to be my "default" version to /usr/local/bin/R and /usr/local/bin/Rscript. If I want to call another version of R, I invoke it explicitly as say R-2.15.3 (assuming such version exists). You could also create a separate directory for the executables for each version and symlink them under different names to /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin. I never had problems with versions of R clashing. The executable R that a user executes is a shell wrapper that sets up all necessary environment variables and then calls the actual executable (which sits in /usr/local/lib64/<R-directory>/bin/exec). Thus, other versions on $PATH do not cause any trouble. HTH, Peter ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
