[Rd] upgrading an R installation to next versoin

[J. Hosking]

Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> On 6/30/05, J. Hosking <jh910 at juno.com> wrote:
> 
...

>> I keep a separate directory ...\R\library for nonstandard packages,
>> with environment variable R_LIBS set to the directory name.
> 
> 
> Do you mean your R_LIBS has two components: one to look in
> ..\R\rcurrent\library and a second to look in ..\R\library? What does
> it look like exactly?
> 
> When you do install.packages(whatever) does it install to the
> ..\R\library rather than ..\R\rcurrent\library ?   Also, does
> updates.packages() work as expected for you?
> 
My R_LIBS environment variable is just

   R_LIBS=C:\progs\r\library

and within R I see

   > .libPaths()
   [1] "C:/progs/r/library"          "C:/progs/r/rcurrent/library"

i.e., the default library is automatically appended.  The help for 
.libPaths explains this.  And yes, install.packages() installs to
C:\progs\R\library and update.packages() works as expected.

> 
>>My miktex.ini file specifies ...\R\rcurrent\share\texmf as a place
>>to look for input files.
> 
> 
> I think its necessary to rebuild the name data base in miktex too
>     initexmf -u
> although ignoring that step may work as long as the filenames 
> have not changed.  

You are probably correct, though I have not yet encountered any problems 
that I could attribute to not running initexmf -- no doubt the filenames 
have not changed recently.

> I was hoping to continue using a vanilla
> miktex installation as I do now rather than having a custom miktex.ini
> file.  At any rate my batch file would continue to work even with your setup
> so I think I should be ok here.
> 
> 
>>That should take care of your points 3, 4, and 2, respectively.
>>Duncan's suggestion of an R_ENVIRON environment variable (which
>>I didn't know about; thanks, Duncan) should take care of point 1.
>>
>>Jon Hosking
> 
> 
> It occurs to me in reading this that I could keep the *.site files in 
> ..\R and then have my miktex update batch file also copy them 
> to the appropriate etc folder.  Thus keeping an R\library folder
> and running the batch file after each new installation would
> address 1, 2 and 4 even without using the same name for the
> rw... folder.  This still does not handle the shortcut key which
> I would have to handle manually or determine if there is a way
> I could also add that to my batch file.
> 

Jon Hosking