Installing R packages on Ubuntu “Precise”

Question

I'm trying to install the R package "raster", and am getting the same error reported here: Can not install ggplot package in R 2.14.1 . I thought the best way of dealing with this would be to upgrade R, but I did the incantations here http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/README , but still have R version 2.14.1.

1) Is there something else I can do to upgrade R on my OS (Ubuntu Precise), or do more recent versions of R depend on more recent versions of Ubuntu?

2) If R upgrade is not practical without OS upgrade, how do I install the correct version of the "raster" package for my platform?

Answer 1

Briefly:

1. It is extremely easy to get current R (ie 3.0.3) onto Ubuntu 12.04 "Precise" -- just read the fine README at the CRAN site

2. Once you have done so, also install r-base-dev to make sure you build packages.

3. Then install the "raster" package from source.

Answer 2

Most likely you missed either the first or second step. You need to have the correct key (which is specified in the "Secure Apt" section of the README) and you need to add a line to your /etc/atp/sources.list file. I actually play around with different distros enough that I have the following script to take care of this for me on distros based on Precise.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

## For newest versions of R
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E084DAB9

# I'm sure there is a better way to add this line to
# the end of /etc/apt/sources.list but this works and I'm lazy
sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://streaming.stat.iastate.edu/CRAN/bin/linux/ubuntu precise/' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install r-base r-base-dev

That should get you updated to the newest version of R and from there you should have no problem getting the newest version of ggplot2.