A newbee problem compiling R in ubuntu.

Let me share you a handy thing I learned. You can get the commands
that the R packages are built with, along with the source code.  Make
a directory (this will download a bunch of stuff)

apt-get source r-base-core

that should download a tarball of original R source code, a diff file
that is applied to build R deb, and it will open the code and apply
the diff.  You can look inside the directory, in a subdirectory
"debian", where the configure files that control package building are
kept.

If you type "dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot"  in the directory where all
that stuff got opened up (the one "above" the debian subdirectory), it
will build the debian packages.  It would not be an incredibly
difficult thing to replace that R source package with the new one you
want to use.  But I don't think you need to.  Just look in the rules
file under debian subdirectory, you will see the configure statement
they use.  I think in there you'll also find information about what
devel packages they assume you have.

I find it to be a little difficult to revise debian builds, so I don't
really mean you ought to do that. But you could.  And I often have!