How to install 2 different R versions on Debian?

Question

On our server, R 2.12.1 is installed following the instructions on http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/ , using apt-get install etc etc.

Due to c

Answer 1

It's true that building R from source is very very easy (even I can do it!), as long as you know the following command to run first :

apt-get build-dep r-base

otherwise you might get missing library type errors from make. Thanks to Dirk posting that gem in the past. I haven't seen that in the manual, README or FAQ.

Then, it's just :

./configure
make

I suppose this might be a consideration for you then: does R use static or dynamic system libraries? Might a self-built R link to different libraries than the pre-packaged binary R? (I don't know). How much you go into that depends on how critical your application of R is I guess and which system libraries are critical to you.