Why I can't load most libraries in littler?

Question

I have a simple script foo.R, and inside it a single line:

library("argparse")

When I invoke the script from the bash shell I got the following error:

$r foo.R 
Error in library("argparse") : there is no package called ‘argparse’

OTOH, when I invoke Rscript, everyting seems fine:

$ Rscript foo.R 
Loading required package: proto

Why the difference? The littler README says nothing about problems with loading libraries.

I use 64 bit Linux Mint 15 (based on Ubuntu 13.04) with R (R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)) and littler (version 0.1.5) installed from Ubuntu universe apt repository (e.g. http://ftp.acc.umu.se/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/l/littler/)

Answer 1

Your system it confused. Here littler works just like a charm:

edd@max:~$ r -e'print(search())'
[1] ".GlobalEnv"   "Autoloads"    "package:base"
edd@max:~$ r -lMASS -e'print(search())'        
[1] ".GlobalEnv"        "package:MASS"      "package:utils"    
[4] "package:stats"     "package:graphics"  "package:grDevices"
[7] "Autoloads"         "package:base"    
edd@max:~$ r -lRcpp -e'print(search())'   
[1] ".GlobalEnv"      "package:Rcpp"    "package:methods" "Autoloads"     
[5] "package:base"   
edd@max:~$ 

I don't know about Mint, but you could try the Ubuntu repo at CRAN and get a pre-built littler. Else just fetch the tarball and build it -- takes under a minute. It does hardcode some configuration-time paths into the binary so the Mint build could be at fault.

On Debian and Ubuntu, however, everything is as it should be.