I was trying to build R myself and put it in a temp_R folder by giving a command like ./configure --prefix=/dir/where/I/wanted/to/put/R. But it seems that some of the important stuff was put into the temp_R folder all the same.Should I have extracted the archive to the folder where I wanted to have R before compiling, or what other solution should I use?
Can the --prefix path be the same as the directory where I downloaded/unzipped the source?
linux;ubuntu;compiling;configure;r
When you run ./configure --prefix ... it typically puts all the files in the directory you just downloaded to anyway. The --prefix option is utilized during the make and make install steps that you run afterwards. Primarily the make install step will install all the software that the make step compiled to the locations derived from --prefix /some/path.