Stopping automatic updates of R; transfering packages after update

Posit Professional & Hosted Products
,
1

Hi all,

On my Ubuntu (20.04.4), my R installation recently updated to 4.2.0. This led to me not being able to load my packages, but having to reinstall them. (More unfortunate was that I was traveling to a conference just after this happened, and I had limited access to the internet, meaning that I could not alter my figures anymore.)

I have now unchecked https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu in Ubuntu's Software & Update. I was wondering if anyone had more tips on guaranteeing that R is only updated when I want it to? An extra reason for doing this is that having software updated during an analysis could lead to irreproducible behaviour.

Also, even though I have by this time installed all my packages again; is there any quick way to do the transfer? Reinstalling from scratch seems inefficient.

System Information:

  • RStudio Edition: Desktop
  • RStudio Version: 2021.09.0+351
  • OS Version: Ubuntu 20.04.4
  • R Version: 4.2.0
2

Another question: is there a recommended environment manager yet for R, like Conda for Python?

3

For managing R versions you can use rig

For managing R package versions you can use renv

R packages need to be compiled for an specific R version (at least for a specific major version) so sadly reinstalling after a major R upgrade is mandatory but you can save considerable time if you use precompiled binaries from the RStudio Public Package Manager

https://packagemanager.rstudio.com/

1 Like
4

This topic was automatically closed 21 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

If you have a query related to it or one of the replies, start a new topic and refer back with a link.