Installing R inside MSYS2 using Miniconda in Windows

This article demonstrates how install R using Miniconda inside MSYS2 MINGW64 shell

Download and install Miniconda

Install miniconda iniside c:\msys64\opt\miniconda without adding to PATH

Set PATH environment variable permanently in MSYS2 .bashrc

Open c:\msys64\home\<username>\.bashrc and add scripts folder to the PATH

Example .bashrc

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/miniconda/Scripts
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/miniconda/Library/bin

Please note that we are not specifying windows path, we are using POSIX path only

Close and open the MINGW64 terminal by executing

c:\msys64\mingw64.exe

Initiate conda inside MSYS2

Now initiate conda by issuing below command

$ conda init bash

Close and open the MINGW64 terminal by executing

Check the version of conda

$ conda --version
conda 4.10.3

Install R using conda

$ conda install -c r r-irkernel

Check the version of R

$ R --version
R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05) -- "Action of the Toes"
Copyright (C) 2019 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)

R is free software and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You are welcome to redistribute it under the terms of the
GNU General Public License versions 2 or 3.
For more information about these matters see
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Now you can install jupyter and enjoy programming in R

Important Note: a shell code introduced inside file .bash_profile as below

# >>> conda initialize >>>
# !! Contents within this block are managed by 'conda init' !!
eval "$('/opt/miniconda/Scripts/conda.exe' 'shell.bash' 'hook')"
# <<< conda initialize <<<

If you want to work in your regular bash for other compilation works, you need to comment this

Otherwise other compilers like clang, gcc might get impacted due to the fact $PATH will be changed to point to conda folders

Finished!