ubuntu - set environment variables for system() in R?

Question

I've been using R in Ubuntu to make system calls using system() for things like spinning up Amazon EC2 instances, managing files on S3, etc. If I start R from the command line everything works fine. But if I start R from a script using Rscript, or from ESS, I have issues with environment variables not being set.

I think this is an issue with me not properly grokking where to set environment variables in Ubuntu. I thought the "right place" (for some definition of "right") was to set user environment variables in ~/.bashrc. This is where I set things like export EC2_HOME=/home/jd/ec2 but when I execute R from ESS and make system calls, the .bashrc script is not being run. I've tried Googing about and I see many an exegesis on environment variables in Ubuntu, such as this one. My knee jerk reaction is to try each recommendation in the aforementioned thread and stop giving a shit as soon as one of the options works. But then I end up with non-standard settings which bite me in the ass later.

So how should I set environment variables so that they are properly set when I run a system() call in R?

Answer 1

You can try to set them in R itself using Sys.setenv.