```
$ sudo apt install r-base
```

```
#!/usr/bin/Rscript --vanilla

# This R script:
# - calls the builtin API to install the versions package
#   if not already installed.
# - then triggers a version check on the package passed as 
#   argument to this script.

args = commandArgs(trailingOnly=TRUE)

if (length(args)==0) {
     stop("Must supplied one argument (package version to list version from).n", call.=FALSE)
}

# install idempotently an R pkg (no debian package for it yet)
pkgLoad <- function(pkg) {
    if (!require(pkg, character.only = TRUE)) {
        install.packages(pkg, dep=TRUE)
        if(!require(pkg, character.only = TRUE))
            stop("Package not found")
    }
    suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(pkg, character.only = TRUE))
}

pkgLoad('versions')

versions::available.versions(args[1])

```