R Usage In Unix And Linux

R has the concept of a workspace as well as a personal library/package area.  (Libraries are collections of packages; packages are sets of R code and/or data that someone has combined and made available.  Similar in concept to matlab toolboxes or C++ libraries or Weka jar files).

 

In general, installing packages/libraries in the main R library folder is not possible.  You should normally do it in your personal workspace.  However, unless you tell the R environment where to look for your personal packages, it won't be able to invoke them.  Hence, you need to set the R_LIB environment variable.

 

Generally, the recommended way is to  create a .Renvironment file in your home directory.  This can hold various configuration options, including default page sizes and so forth.  You then store the name of this file in the environment R_ENVIRON (examples of the R_ENVIRON exist in the USER_SCRIPTS directory

).

 

To set the R_LIB environment variable, you add this line to the .Renvironment file:

R_LIB=/path/to/yourRlibraryDirectory

 

NOTE:  If you may be working in more than one type of Unix environment, you should have a .Renvironment file for each flavor.  This is because parts of the Packages may be implementing C/C++ or Fortran code.  Examples of how to automatically choose the right .Renvironment file can be found in the USER_SCRIPTS directory).