R

Installing R and R Packages

Users who require versions of R or R packages packages that are not currently installed on SMU HPC systems are encouraged to utilize custom virtual environments. Virtual environments allow users to use specific versions of R with the packages of their choice. Additionally, R environments are increase portability, which will help to ensure that R programs that run on SMU HPC systems can also run on other machines with minimal changes.

There are two primary ways to create virtual environments: using renv or using Conda environments.

There are benefits and downsides to each of the methods, but with a few exceptions, the main difference is user preference. In general, the thing to remember is that Conda installs precompiled packages and manages dependencies while renv environments typically compile packages and rely on the user to maintain dependencies. This means that Conda environments are sometimes easier to set up, but renv environments are sometimes more efficient and dependent on user package management.

Instructions for setting up virtual environments

We encourage users to try setting up environments using the following methods and choose the one that they are most comfortable with.

Next we’ll look at setup up R virtual environments using renv.