Setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH from inside R

Question

I have installed an R package but, in order to load it via library, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH needs to be set to the path where one of the libraries, called libhts.so.2 is located. The loading only works when editing the LD_LIBRARY_PATH before going into R, not after.

I have tried several different methods in solving this:

1. exporting a modified LD_LIBRARY_PATH from the configure script located in the R package.
2. Creating a soft link to the shared library within the same configure script.

Both have not worked and it seems to me that there is a variable that stores the results of the LD_LIBRARY_PATH once R is started. Maybe the solution is editing that variable.

Answer 1

With help from Hans Lub, the way to solve the problem is by using the dyn.load() function and supplying the full path to the library:

dyn.load('path_to_library')

and then, loading via library should work.