Hi Gene, This is probably not best practice, but I install packages as root, which allows me to write into the default library. The restriction on non-root users being blocked from making changes to appications is pretty standard.
Jim On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 8:18 AM Gene Leynes <gley...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hello R Community, > > I've been using R for a long time, and this is a question that still makes > me think twice every single time I install R, which is more and more often . > > The first search hit is this StackOverflow question: > https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32540919/library-is-not-writable > > The warning message hasn't changed over the years: > > install.packages("randomForest") > Installing package into ‘/usr/local/lib/R/site-library’ > (as ‘lib’ is unspecified) > Warning in install.packages : > 'lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library"' is not writable > > In this question they suggest using the personal library, which is what I > end up doing as well, but some people suggest changing your group. This > actually seems like the right answer to me, but others say they had > problems when they changed groups, which also sounds about right. > > Can someone please tell me (or tell StackOverflow) the real best practice? > > I've gotten into some very thorny issues with installations that can't find > any library when I deploy jobs using cron or other users, and it's hard to > remember / figure out how to install (if missing) libraries in the script > because it's hard to remember the mirror syntax. > > I know there's a packrat package, and I've invented some workarounds, but > I normally just need two or three stable packages for a particular project. > I'd bet that .libPaths would be implemented differently today, but maybe > with the right library path none of that would be necessary to understand? > > My final simplified questions are: > > 1. What is the best practice to install libraries so that the current > user (Linux) can always find them? > 2. Why is the default library path not writable by default, should we > change that? > > Hope everyone's doing well out there, and I hope to see some of you at > conferences when things get back to normal. > > Thank you, > > Gene > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@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. ______________________________________________ R-help@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.
