Restore library location after upgrading to R 4.0

[LionelD]

The company I work for used R Studio Server to have shared libraries and when we upgraded from 3.6 to 4.0 some of the library permissions seem to be messed up. There are 2 main problems .

1. I can no longer install packages at '/usr/lib/R/site-library' when I try I get it's not writable.
2. RStudio removed the site library install package UI despite it still being in .libPaths()

We need to be able to have a common library location all users can add packages too since we are a small group.

Can't write to site library code example

install.packages("dplyr", "/usr/lib/R/site-library")
# Error in install.packages : unable to install packages

.libPath return

.libPaths()
"/home/user/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.0" "/usr/lib/R/site-library"                       
"/usr/lib/R/library"   

The RStudio UI only has the personal library location in the dropdown, but not the other library locations used by production.

[andresrcs]

@LionelD

I can no longer install packages at '/usr/lib/R/site-library' when I try I get it's not writable.

You can either set broad permissions on the folder (777) or create a group with appropriate permissions and make all your RStudio users part of that group (775)

[nirgrahamuk]

@LionelD

We need to be able to have a common library location all users can add packages too since we are a small group.

I think your organisation should consider adopting renv
CRAN - Package renv (r-project.org)
This lets you track versions used in projects, and can support a sitewide renv cache