[Rd] Wishlist: write R's bin path to the PATH variable and remove the version string in the installation dir under Windows

[Wincent]

I also prefer to keep the old versions.

Sometimes, I have spent time to set up the system with older version
and don't want to update to the latest (e.g. the new RGtk2 needs
updated GTk2 as well) because the older still works and I don't need
the new features.

Regards
Ronggui

On 4 May 2011 13:26, Thomas Lumley <tlumley at uw.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Yihui Xie <xie at yihui.name> wrote:
>> 1. "Few Windows users use these commands" does not imply they are not
>> useful, and I have no idea how many Windows users really use them. How
>> do you run "R CMD build" when you build R packages under Windows? You
>> don't write "C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/bin/i386/R.exe CMD build", do
>> you?
>>
>> I think the reason we have to mess with the PATH variable for each
>> single software package is that Windows is Not Unix, so you may hate
>> Windows instead of a package that modifies your PATH variable.
>>
>> For the choice of i386 and x64, you can let the user decide which bin
>> path to use. I believe the number of users who frequently switch back
>> and forth is fairly small.
>>
>> 2. Under most circumstances I just keep the latest version of R. To
>> maintain R code with old R versions will be more and more difficult
>> with new features and changes coming in. Disk space is cheap, but time
>> is not.
>>
>
> I keep old versions for basically the same reasons you don't -- that
> is, I have analyses that ran under the old versions, and I can be sure
> they will give the same answer a year later if I keep the old
> versions. This isn't so much because of changes in R as because of
> changes in packages.
>
>   -thomas
>
> --
> Thomas Lumley
> Professor of Biostatistics
> University of Auckland
>
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>



-- 
Wincent Ronggui HUANG
Sociology Department of Fudan University
PhD of City University of Hong Kong
http://asrr.r-forge.r-project.org/rghuang.html