On Frontera, R is available via the Rstats module and R packages can be installed as described below. You can locate available versions, and prerequisites, with:

This will also give you information about the RStudio and RStudioDesktop modules. At time of writing, you can use R on Frontera simply by loading the default module for Rstats:

As mentioned in the page on additional packages, you can see which packages you have available by starting R, then issuing the command to see the packages available.

Installing additional packages

If you want to install packages not on the basic list, use R from a login node, not the compute nodes.

On a login node, just start an R console session and use as described on the Additional Packages page and the packages will be downloaded and installed (being compiled with the currently loaded compilers if necessary). If you have problems installing any of the contributed packages, you can reach out to TACC consulting for help.

R will offer to create a personal library directory in your home directory under for your own installed packages. Your personal R library will be available on compute nodes and will be the first item in your :

RStudio on Frontera

As a special feature of several of the machines at TACC, including Frontera, RStudio can be launched in your web browser from the TACC Analysis Portal, where you will be given the resources of one Frontera node and the ability to run console requests or else edit and run files of R code, from the relevant RStudio panes; you will need a TACC login for this. This is an excellent environment for data exploration and visualization. Simply request an RStudio session under the Frontera tab, select an allocation against which it should be billed, and when the request is processed, select to open R in your browser (this will require an additional login with your TACC username). Note that any workspace information saved during your last session, even if it was a console session on a login node or an interactive session, will be available to you; likewise, workspace changes saved here will be accessible on the login nodes or during subsequent interactive sessions.

You can also install packages from the console here, which will result in them being installed into your local library under in your home directory.

Note that the R packages you previously installed on a Frontera login node may not be available here, since a different version of R might be running in the portal. Conversely, you may find that the TACC Analysis Portal provides a more complete collection of preinstalled R packages, as compared to the rest of Frontera. For example, is already installed for you in the portal. (This is because the TACC Analysis Portal runs RStudio in a specially constructed Apptainer container on a compute node; thus, its R environment is quite different.)