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linuxrubuntudebianrevolution-r

Revolution R: installation on debian jessie


I need to install Revolution R on a Debian Jessie (version 8, 64-bit).

On my system there is already installed R 3.1.1 and Rstudio.

The Revolution download page give me three installation package for Ubuntu: 12, 14, 15 (older LTS, current LTS, current version). Rstudio package give instead a single package for both Ubuntu 12.04+ and Debian 8+ (32 and 64-bit versions).

There is a way to understand what is the right package to install?

EDIT: I see from the community group that Debian is not officially supported, but should be OK using an Ubuntu packages.


Solution

  • It seems OK to install Revolution R on Debian Jessie.

    Some precautions:

    • On my system there is libjpeg8 as missing dependency. To avoid this, I installed from testing repository.

      1. I tried to install the package using gdebi to install and resolve all necessary dependencies.
      2. libjpeg8 is missing from stable repository, so I take it from testing repository, protecting other packages with pinning preferences:

        sudo printf "# testing\ndeb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
        
        sudo vim /etc/apt/preferences
        # old
        Package: *
        Pin: release o=Debian,a=stable
        Pin-Priority: 980
        
        Package: *
        Pin: release a=jessie-backports
        Pin-Priority: 900
        
        # new 
        Package: libjpeg8 
        Pin: release o=Debian,a=stretch 
        Pin-Priority: 990
        

      Note: The installed package is the libjpeg8:i386 version.

    • the installation process of Revolution R erases the original R and Rscript executables, so in my opinion it's better backup them (as root or using sudo):

      sudo cp -i /usr/bin/Rscript /usr/bin/Rscript-original
      sudo cp -i /usr/bin/R /usr/bin/R-original
      
    • Just in case you need to restore the original R and Rstudio executables without a backup, should be enough to reinstall the r-base-core package:

      sudo apt-get --reinstall install r-base-core -V
      
    • using Revolution R with Rstudio should be fine. However if you would use a custom version of R (the original one, e.g.) with Rstudio it's possible to follow these instructions:

      export RSTUDIO_WHICH_R=/usr/bin/R-original
      echo "export RSTUDIO_WHICH_R=/usr/bin/R-original" >> ~/.profile
      source ~/.profile
      # logout and login again to use this profile also outside the bash