What is the default folder that the R Analytics app looks for installed R libraries?

[xiangtaner]

Hi,

What's the default folder that the R Analytics app looks for installed R libraries?

All my R libraries are installed in the folder: /home/{username}/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3

But it seems that R Analytics App does NOT show the libraries under it, instead it shows a different set of libraries. I have opencpu installed on the machine where R is installed.

Thanks!

[gwobben · Accepted solution]

Hi xiangtaner,

It looks like you've already found the right spot. The packages should be installed to /usr/local/lib/R/site-library and this folder cannot be changed (at least not that I've found). The reason for this is security. When users can execute code in R via the API they might install packages that you don't want in your environment. Therefore R will create a new folder for every request to the API and everything the user does is confined to this folder, including installing packages.

The easiest way to install packages for all users is:

sudo R
install.packages(<package_name>, lib = "/usr/local/lib/R/site-library")

I will update the documentation with these instructions. This is the link to the OpenCPU documentation (chapter 3.2 deals with installing packages): https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/opencpu/vignettes/opencpu-server.pdf

[xiangtaner]

Hi gwobben, Thanks for the clarification!

[xiangtaner]

Found out that the R libraries location that R Analytics App use is /usr/lib/R/library which is the system R libraries. Then the question is whether we can change it to R user library /home/{username}/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.3.

Thanks!