Whether on Win, Mac or Lin, if presented with the option to install from source, take it once. If it works fine. If it doesn’t, it will never compile for the vast majority of RStudio users who do not devote an appreciable portion of their time to development and are well versed in modifying source code to address situations peculiar to their choice of OS.
The “later source version” temptation can be avoided with a little patience. Binary versions usually do not lag past 10-14 days.
Among Linux distributions, building from source almost always succeeds unless there are missing dependencies on the target. Usually, a little rseeking will uncover the right name to bring in using apt install. Even here, though, the way can be smoother and the trip much shorter by using r2u from Dirk Eddelbuettel, the World’s Foremost Authority™️ on all things at the intersection of R and Debian.
Key features that allow installing all of tidyverse in under 20 seconds after downloading.
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Full integration with
apt as every binary resolves all its dependencies: No more installations (of pre-built archives) only to discover that a shared library is missing. No more surprises.
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Full integration with
apt so that an update of a system library cannot break an R package: if a (shared) library is used by a CRAN, the package manager knows and will not remove it. No more (R package) breakage from (system) library updates.
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Installations are fast, automated and reversible thanks to package management layer.
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Fast and well-connected mirror at r2u.stat.illinois.edu on the Internet2
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Complete coverage with (currently) ~ 20,000 CRAN packages (and 240+ from BioConductor).
- Complete support for both Ubuntu 20.04 ("focal") and Ubuntu 22.04("jammy").
- Optional (but recommeded) bspm use automagically connects R functions like
install.packages() to apt for access to binaries and dependencies.
The World’s Foremost Authority™️ used in honor of Professor Irwin Corey.