Upgrading R using brew on OS X

Question

I have had this problem once before, and I can’t figure out the best way to fix it.

I am upgrading r from v3.1.2_1 to v3.1.3 to using brew upgrade r. But when I do that I lose all the libraries that I installed under v3.1.2_1. I have to install all the libraries from scratch.

The problem seems to be that brew creates two independent directory structures for two different versions of R under /usr/local/Cellar/r. Is there a way to install R by telling it to use the existing libraries that have been installed?

I could just copy over the files from one version to another, but I am afraid of breaking something.

Answer 1

You can tell R where to store libraries:

R_LIBS=~/Rlibs

New version of R will look for libraries in this folder. But you will still have to update libraries:

update.packages()

Details are outlined in this post. As a side matter, have a look at the point 2.8 in R FAQ, this one is for Windows but the point is fairly generic. You may be willing to keep old installations the way they are or install new libraries.