On our cluster I have installed R to a staged location that other users share for use, but I remain the user that manages the staged installed binaries. The cluster doesn't share the user's home location (they share a mounted path where the data is placed). We want to know if we are able to have the users specify where their bioconductor installs go so they don't have to ask for my help every time they want to use packages. I suspect the fact that they have access to the shared R script library location might interfere with the usual mode (since it wasn't installed using root as I am not an admin nor do I have access to become one).
What should I tell the other users to do? Do I have to be the one to install these packages or are there ways to manually choose the library location for a user-specific install?
The principle is the same, arrange .libPaths() to contain a combination of read-only paths (early in the vector, packages available to all users) and paths that individual users can read and write to. Arrange for the different paths using R_LIBS_USER or other approaches (e.g., Rprofile.site).