How to upgrade R version on WSL?

user_1789466 0
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I'm running Ubuntu in Windows Subsystem for Linux, and apt-get update isn't finding the newest versions of r-base. On Ubuntu 16.04, the newest R version it gets is 3.2.3. How do I upgrade to newer versions of R?

ubuntu-16.04 windows-subsystem-for-linux r
2 Answers

It turns out that the version of r-base in the default Ubuntu repository is behind the newest version of r-base from CRAN.

The solution is to add R-CRAN to /etc/apt/sources.list, using the instructions here: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial-cran35/" >> /etc/apt/sources.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E298A3A825C0D65DFD57CBB651716619E084DAB9
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade r-base  # This upgrades r-base if it's already installed; otherwise it doesn't install it
user_17894660

As @DirkEddelbuettel said in his comments, this README has helpful information for how you can update your R version in a Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) setting. For me, I updated from R 3.4 to R 4.0 on Ubuntu 18.04.

I am running bionic (I used lsb_release -a to find out), and I wanted R 4.0 so I picked the appropriate deb line (for me: deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu bionic-cran40/) to add to my /etc/apt/sources.list file (had to use sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list to add this line to the end). Then I ran sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get install r-base. Now I have 4.0.2, the newest version. Just pick the particular Ubuntu/R combo that you want based on the options from the README. I hope this can help someone.

user_85814950
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