Installing different versions of R simultaneously on Linux

G'day Rainer,

On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:53:12 +0200
Rainer M Krug <r.m.krug at gmail.com> wrote:

What flavour of Linux are we talking about?

Sorry - I am running SuSE on the machine where I need it.

Sorry, I am not familiar with that flavour; before switching to Debian
(and Debian based distributions), I was using RedHat. ?And before that
Slackware.

4) Run in /opt/src a script that uses "update-alternative" install
to install the new version and creates a link
from /opt/R/R-x.y.z/bin/R to /opt/bin/R-x.y.z

How do I do this? I usually call "sudo make install". Do I have to use
"update-alternative --install R-2.7.1 R 2" if I want to have R-2.7.1
aqs the second priority installed?

I do the "make install" step manually, the script just alerts the
system that another alternative for the R command was installed.

If memory serves correctly, the "alternatives" mechanism was developed
by Debian and adopted by RedHat (or the other way round). ?I am not
sure whether SuSE has adopted this, or a similar system.

Essentially, for a command, say foo, for which several alternatives
exists, is installed on the system in, say /usr/bin/, as a link
to /etc/alternatives/foo and /etc/alternatives/foo is a link to the
actual program that is called.

E.g. on my machine I have

berwin at berwin-nus1:~$ update-alternatives --list wish
/usr/bin/wish8.5
/usr/bin/wish8.4

which tells me that wish 8.5 and wish8.4 are installed and I could call
them explicitly. ?/usr/bin/wish is a link to /etc/alternatives/wish
and /etc/alternatives/wish will point to either of these two programs
(depending on what the system admin decided should be the default, i.e.
should be used if a user just types 'wish').

A command like "update-alternatives --config wish" allows to configure
whether "wish" should mean "wish8.5" or "wish8.4". ?And all that is
necessary is to change the link in /etc/alternatives/wish to point at
the desired program.

That is what I need - but I can't find update-alternatives in SuSE

As I said, I do not know whether SuSE offers this alternatives system
or a similar system. ?If it does, perhaps it is just a matter of
installing some additional packages? ?If it offers a different, but
similar system, then you would have to ask on a SuSE list on that
system is maintained and configured.

On my machine I would say "apt-file search update-alternatives" to find
out which package provides that command and to install that package if
it is not yet installed. ?I am afraid I do not know what the equivalent
command on SuSE is.

Typing R alone, will usually start the most recently installed
version (as this will have the highest priority) but I can configure
that via "sudo update-alternatives --config R". __I.e., I can make R
run a particular version. __Since the "update-alternative" step
above also registers all the *.info files and man pages, I will
also access the documentation of that particular R version (e.g.,
C-h i in emacs will give me access to the info version of the
manuals of the version of R which is run by the R command).

Exactly what I would like to have.

Well, if you ever use a system that has the alternatives set up and the
update-alternatives command, I am happy to share my script with you.

Cheers,

? ? ? ?Berwin