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building from source after installing Debian packages

(Apologies for double posting; I sent this to r-help and was suggested that I 
ask here which I should probable have done to begin with).

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Dear All,

I've got into the habit of installing R from the precompiled Debian binaries, 
including many of the packages from the r-cran-* Debian packages, and later 
building from source (e.g., to link against Goto's BLAS, or to build patched 
versions, etc). I install the newly built R to the very same place 
(/usr/lib/R). This allows me to build and update R when I wish, AND provides 
the ease of quickly updating many packages.

Things have always worked fine, but after a few funny problems (which could be 
unrelated to the process itself) I've started wondering if this is a rather 
silly thing to do, and if I should keep my own build separate from the Debian 
stuff. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,