R - How to set the path of install.packages() for shiny server ? - Ubuntu
r, shiny, shiny-server, ubuntu
Solution
Yes -- I consider this to be a misfeature and disable my per-user directory.
Moreover, I mostly use a script `install.r` (of which a version is an example in the littler package you can install as part of Ubuntu) which simple explicitly set the `/usr/local/lib/R/site-library` directory as the default. With a patch we got into R 3.0.2 or 3.0.3, normal user can write into the directory and will now create group-writeable directories so other users can update and overwrite -- just make everybody a member of the same group, say `staff` or `admin`. And then you don't even need `sudo` or root.
I have essentially answered this same question a few times here over the years (minus the shiny angle, which is not really relevant) so feel free to search for the other for more details, examples, ...
Problem
For my system: Ubuntu 12.04 and R 3.03, whenever I install a custom package in R via ``` >install.packages() ``` the package is installed by default to ``` /home/USER/R/x86_64-pc-linus-gnu-library/3.0/ ``` as opposed to system-wide in ``` /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/ ``` which is needed for shiny-server to work with that package. My temporary solution is to copy the packages to the correct folder after the fact. Question: How can I set the default install path from the start to avoid this problem?