Oracle R Distribution 3.3.0 Released

Oracle R Distribution version 3.3.0 has been released on all supported platforms today. This release, code-named "Supposedly Educational", contains several significant bug fixes and improvements to R, including: 

• Support for downloading data from secure https-enabled sites using download.file
• Speed improvements for a number of low-level R functions called by higher-level, commonly used functions. These include speedups for vector selection with boolean data, function argument matching, sorting vectors, and finding a single value in a vector with match.
• A new function sigma to calculate residual standard deviation for a variety of statistical models.
• A new high-performance radix sort algorithm contributed by Matt Dowle.
• Packages built using C++11 code are now supported on Windows.

Improvements specific to Oracle's Distribution of R include: 

• The ability to install to a non-default R_HOME directory on Unix systems. 

• A new RPM: R-core-extra, containing several required libraries not available on Linux 6 systems.

R has always depended on several third party libraries (zlib, bzip2, xz, and pcre). Prior to R-3.3.0, R depended on much older versions of these libraries, but, if they were not found on the system, bundled copies were included that were built on the fly. R-3.3.0 depends on much newer versions of these libraries and no longer contains the bundled copies. This means that R 3.3.0 won't build against Linux 6 as is, because the native versions of these libraries are older than those that R-3.3.0 requires. The R-core-extra RPM contains the required versions of these libraries and is provided as a convenience for users of Oracle Linux 6. Adding the location of the libraries in R-core-extra to LD_LIBRARY_PATH removes the need to built these libraries separately. Oracle Linux 7 introduces the required versions of these libraries.

The yum commands to install Oracle R Distribution 3.3.0 on Linux 6 are as follows:

yum install R-3.3.0

yum install R-core-extra

Then set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the location of the R-core-extra RPM. For example, the default location of the R-core-extra RPM is /usr/lib64/R/port/Linux-X64/lib. The following command sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the default location:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib64/R/port/Linux-X64/lib

On Linux 7, the required versions of these libraries are available natively so setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH is not required.

Oracle R Distribution 3.3.0 is the certified with Oracle R Enterprise 1.5.1. Refer to Table in the Oracle R Enterprise Installation Guide for supported configurations of Oracle R Enterprise components. To install Oracle R Distribution, follow the instructions for your platform in the Oracle R Enterprise Installation and Administration Guide.