How to install older R version on CentOS

Question

The installed version is 3.3.0.

I would like to install version 2.X but I don't know how.

Answer 1

Are you building from the tar.gz file? If so, you should be able to download any version you like, here's a folder with the files for 2.x versions:

https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/

EDIT to add:

You can try installing like so, in your shell terminal. (this should work in, for example, Debian, but please read on for the OP's solution in CentOS).

wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-2/R-2.15.3.tar.gz
tar zxvf R-2.15.3.tar.gz; cd R-2.15.3/ 
./configure; make; sudo make install

ADDED from OP, who found a CentOS solution:

Thanks to @resscova's answer and some research on the net. Here's how to install R-2.X.tar.gz on Centos :

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install ncurses-devel zlib-devel texinfo gtk+-devel gtk2-devel qt-devel tcl-devel tk-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel
./configure --with-x=no
make
make install

Answer 2

Thanks to @resscova's answer and some research on the net. Here's one way install R-2.X.tar.gz on Centos:

yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install ncurses-devel zlib-devel texinfo gtk+-devel gtk2-devel qt-devel tcl-devel tk-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel
./configure --with-x=no
make
make install

Answer 3

I installed R-3.3.3 with sources - https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.3.3.tar.gz on CENTOS 7 after xlsx library stops working with R-3.4.1

These are the steps I took for successful Installation of R 3.3.3

wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.3.3.tar.gz
tar xvzf R-3.3.3.tar.gz
cd R-3.3.3
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install ncurses-devel zlib-devel texinfo gtk+-devel gtk2-devel qt-devel tcl-devel tk-devel kernel-headers kernel-devel readline-devel

./configure --with-x=no 
make
sudo make install

Make sure to install readline-devel otherwie you may have to use --with-readline=no while configuring make file.