Installing R from source

Installing a specific version of R on Linux Ubuntu requires to compile it from source code

Intro

Installing R from source is required whenever you need a specific version of R rather than latest release available as binary on either CRAN or Ubuntu repositories.

Install required dependencies

Enable the required and optional repositories. You will need them to check R installation dependencies.

Ad the R pubblic key

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key '95C0FAF38DB3CCAD0C080A7BDC78B2DDEABC47B7'

Add the following lines in /etc/apt/source.list

deb http://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian bullseye-cran40/
deb-src  http://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian bullseye-cran40/

Next update and, install the build dependencies for R:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-get build-dep r-base

After checking dependencies you’d better comment those lines in source.list.

Specify R version

export R_VERSION=4.1.2

Download and extract R

curl -O https://cran.rstudio.com/src/base/R-4/R-${R_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar -xzvf R-${R_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd R-${R_VERSION}

Configure R

./configure \
    --prefix=/opt/R/${R_VERSION} \
    --enable-memory-profiling \
    --enable-R-shlib \
    --with-blas \
    --with-lapack \
    --with-tcltk

Tcltk has been added as packages TSclust and TSdist wont compile

Build and install R

make
sudo make install

Verify R installation

/opt/R/${R_VERSION}/bin/R --version

Create a symlink to R

To ensure that R is available on the default system PATH variable, create symbolic links to the version of R that you installed:

sudo ln -fs /opt/R/${R_VERSION}/bin/R /usr/local/bin/R
sudo ln -fs /opt/R/${R_VERSION}/bin/Rscript /usr/local/bin/Rscript

The f flag force symlink to recreate and therefore to update from previous R versions