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UBUNTU PACKAGES FOR R

R packages for Ubuntu on i386 and amd64 are available for all stable Desktop releases of Ubuntu until their official end of life date. However, only the latest Long Term Support (LTS) release is supported. As of November 1, 2009, the supported releases are Karmic Koala (9.10), Jaunty Jakelope (9.04), Intrepid Ibex (8.10) and Hardy Heron (8.04). See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases for details.

INSTALLATION

To obtain the latest R packages, add an entry like

   deb http://<my.favorite.cran.mirror>/bin/linux/ubuntu karmic/

or

   deb http://<my.favorite.cran.mirror>/bin/linux/ubuntu jaunty/

or

   deb http://<my.favorite.cran.mirror>/bin/linux/ubuntu intrepid/

or

   deb http://<my.favorite.cran.mirror>/bin/linux/ubuntu hardy/

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. See http://cran.r-project.org/mirrors.html for the list of CRAN mirrors. To install the complete R system, use

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install r-base

Users who need to compile R packages from source [e.g. package maintainers, or anyone installing packages with install.packages()] should also install the r-base-dev package:

   sudo apt-get install r-base-dev

The R packages for Ubuntu otherwise behave like the Debian ones. One may find additional information in the Debian README file located at http://cran.R-project.org/bin/linux/debian/.

Installation and compilation of R or some of its packages may require Ubuntu packages from the "backports" repositories. In particular, this is the case for Tcl/Tk 8.5 on Hardy. Therefore, it is suggested to activate the backports repositories with an entry like

   deb http://<my.favorite.ubuntu.mirror>/ hardy-backports main restricted universe

in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. See http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/downloadmirrors for the list of Ubuntu mirrors.

SUPPORTED PACKAGES

A number of R packages are available from the Ubuntu repositories with names starting with r-cran-. The following ones are kept up-to-date on CRAN: all packages part of the r-recommended bundle, namely

   r-cran-boot
   r-cran-class
   r-cran-cluster
   r-cran-codetools
   r-cran-foreign
   r-cran-kernsmooth
   r-cran-lattice
   r-cran-mass
   r-cran-matrix
   r-cran-mgcv
   r-cran-nlme
   r-cran-nnet
   r-cran-rpart
   r-cran-spatial
   r-cran-survival
   r-cran-vr

as well as

   r-cran-rodbc

The other r-cran-* packages are updated with Ubuntu releases only. Users who need to update one of these R packages (say r-cran-foo) should first make sure to obtain all the required build dependencies with

   sudo apt-get build-dep r-cran-foo

Because they rely on the installed version of R, we also provide, on an experimental basis, versions of the following packages as up-to-date as the Ubuntu release allows:

   littler
   rkward
   python-rpy
   python-rpy-doc

Please notice that the maintainers are not necessarily themselves users of these packages, so positive or negative feedback through the usual channels (see below) would be appreciated.

Finally, as an added convenience to Ubuntu users who interact with R through Emacs, we also provide an up-to-date version of the package

   ess

SECURE APT

The Ubuntu archives on CRAN are signed with the key of "Vincent Goulet <vincent.goulet@act.ulaval.ca>" with key ID E2A11821. You can fetch this key with

   gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-key E2A11821

and then feed it to apt-key with

   gpg -a --export E2A11821 | sudo apt-key add -

Some people have reported difficulties using this approach. The issue was usually related to a firewall blocking port 11371. An alternative approach is to search for the key at http://keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/ and copy the key to a plain text file, say key.txt. Then, feed the key to apt-key with

   sudo apt-key add key.txt

ADMINISTRATION AND MAINTENANCE OF R PACKAGES

The R packages part of the Ubuntu r-base and r-recommended packages are installed into the directory /usr/lib/R/library. These can be updated using apt-get with

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get upgrade

The other r-cran-* packages shipped with Ubuntu are installed into the directory /usr/lib/R/site-library.

Installing R packages not provided with Ubuntu first requires tools to compile the packages from source. These tools are installed via the R development package with

   sudo apt-get install r-base-dev

Then a site administrator can install R packages into the directory /usr/local/lib/R/site-library by running R as root and using the

   > install.packages()

function. A routine update can then be undertaken from R using

   > update.packages(lib.loc = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library")

The paths above are stored in the R_LIBS_SITE environment variable defined in the /etc/R/Renviron file.

Individual users can install R packages into their home directory. The simplest procedure is to create a file ~/.Renviron containing, e.g.,

   R_LIBS_USER="~/lib/R/library"

The install.packages() and update.packages() functions will then work in directory ~/lib/R/library. It is also possible to automatically create version-specific library trees; see ?.libPaths in R for more information.

REPORTING PROBLEMS

The best place to report problems with these packages or ask R questions specific to Ubuntu is the R-SIG-Debian mailing list. See

   https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-debian

for more information.

UBUNTU PACKAGES BUILDING

Anyone interested in building Ubuntu packages (e.g. for an unsupported Ubuntu release, another architecture or an old R version) can have a look at the build scripts used by the current maintainers. These are available anonymously from the Subversion repository

   https://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/svn/R/cran-ubuntu/

The scripts contain many small changes needed to compile the original Debian packages on the supported Ubuntu releases. [For older releases (from Dapper to Gutsy, inclusive), see the scripts in revision 1814.]

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Debian R packages are maintained by Dirk Eddelbuettel. The Ubuntu packages are compiled for i386 by Vincent Goulet and for amd64 by Michael Rutter.