Compiling R

R
Author

Felipe Carlos

Published

December 29, 2024

Compiling R from source can be an effective way to customize your installation for specific needs, such as enabling shared libraries or tailoring it for a server environment.

This document shows the commands I use to compile R in my Ubuntu environments.

1. Update package list

Update the package lists to ensure you have the latest versions of the required tools and libraries:

sudo apt update

2. Install required dependencies

Install the necessary tools and libraries for compiling R:

sudo apt install \
        build-essential wget gfortran tzdata \
        libreadline-dev libbz2-dev liblzma-dev \
        libpcre2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev \
        libssl-dev libxml2-dev \
        libblas-dev liblapack-dev \
        zlib1g zlib1g-dev \
        texlive-latex-base texlive-fonts-recommended \
        texlive-fonts-extra texlive-latex-extra \
        openjdk-11-jdk

3. Download the R Source Code

Download the source code for the desired R version (e.g., R 4.3.0):

wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-4/R-4.3.0.tar.gz

Next, extract the downloaded file and navigate into the source directory:

tar -zxvf R-4.3.0.tar.gz
cd R-4.3.0

4. Configure the build

Configure the build with the --enable-R-shlib option to enable the shared library libR.so:

./configure --enable-R-shlib

For servers or minimal installations, you need to exclude the X11 graphical system by adding the --with-x=no flag

5. Compile R

Build the source code using the make command:

make

This step may take some time depending on your system.

6. Install R

Install the compiled binaries and libraries system-wide:

sudo make install