How to install R 3.4.4 in alpine

Question

I am trying to install R in my alpine image of docker. Earlier I did install it in my ubuntu image using

RUN apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E084DAB9 \ && add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386] https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial/' \ && apt-get update \ && apt-get install -y r-base

Nowhere I could find how to install it in alpine. Any help would be appreciated.

My base image is python:3.7-alpine

Answer 1

R is available in Alpine community repositories, so it's just a matter of installing the proper package:

apk add R

For a more compact image you could start off a vanilla Alpine image, such as alpine:3.9, if you don't need Python specifically.

The latest R version available on Alpine is 3.5.1. The closest to 3.4.4 is 3.4.2, which is available in Alpine V3.7. In that case, start off Alpine V3.7:

$ docker run -it alpine:3.7 
/ # apk add R

If you need R version 3.4.4 exactly, you may have to build it from source. Fortunately, there is an excellent ready made Dockerfile by Artem Klevtsov which does just that:
https://github.com/artemklevtsov/r-alpine/blob/master/release/Dockerfile

Simply replace the R version string to 3.4.4 and build the image - works great.

Edit:

Another option for using a specific R version, which build is not available for native Alpine, is enabling glibc support on the Alpine container.

Normally, Alpine builds on musl libc, which is a specialized libc implementation that is generally not compatible to glibc, which is the de-facto standard libc used by most other Linux distributions. With glibc installed, you should be able to run any general-purpose R Linux build on the Alpine container.

The following Dockerfile portion would enable glibc support, adding some 10MB to the Alpine container size:

# Based on: https://github.com/anapsix/docker-alpine-java
FROM alpine:3.7

ENV GLIBC_REPO=https://github.com/sgerrand/alpine-pkg-glibc
ENV GLIBC_VERSION=2.28-r0

RUN set -ex && \
    apk --update add libstdc++ curl ca-certificates && \
    for pkg in glibc-${GLIBC_VERSION} glibc-bin-${GLIBC_VERSION}; \
        do curl -sSL ${GLIBC_REPO}/releases/download/${GLIBC_VERSION}/${pkg}.apk -o /tmp/${pkg}.apk; done && \
    apk add --allow-untrusted /tmp/*.apk && \
    rm -v /tmp/*.apk && \
    /usr/glibc-compat/sbin/ldconfig /lib /usr/glibc-compat/lib