Installing R Packages

The main strength of R is the ecosystem of R packages.

In many instances, users are recommended to install packages within an R REPL. For Linux users, it is possible to use the system package manager instead.

Example

# To install
install.packages("tidyverse")

# To update
update.packages()

# To then use
library(tidyverse)

Alternative Interactive Installations

Install from Source Code

To install from source code, thereby compiling any binaries as necessary, try:

install.packages("path/to/tidyverse_2.0.0.tar.gz", repos=NULL)

Install from GitHub

There are several R packages that exist as toolchains for installing other packages directly from !GitHub.

As an example, the devtools package:

install.packages("devtools")

devtools::install_github("tidyverse/ggplot2")

As another example, the pak package:

install.packages("pak", repos=sprintf("https://r-lib.github.io/p/pak/stable/%s/%s/%s", .Platform$pkgType, R.Version()$os, R.Version()$arch))

pak::pak("tidyverse/ggplot2")

System Package Managers

Ubuntu

Follow the instructions at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/. Namely:

# minimal requirements
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends software-properties-common dirmngr

# add the PPA signing key
# Fingerprint: E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9
wget -qO- https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/marutter_pubkey.asc | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/cran_ubuntu_key.asc

# add the PPA
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs)-cran40/"

# install R
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends r-base

# install R packages
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends r-cran-tidyverse

Arch

While some R packages have corresponding AUR PKGBUILDS, they are generally poor quality. Instead either follow the instructions at https://github.com/dvdesolve/ArchRPkgs#binary-repository or use that repository's PKGBUILDs to build the R packages directly.

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