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

[Ted Byers]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Gabor Grothendieck
> Sent: May-04-11 10:35 AM
> To: Duncan Murdoch
> Cc: R-devel
> Subject: Re: [Rd] Wishlist: write R's bin path to the PATH variable and
remove
> the version string in the installation dir under Windows
> 
> [snip]
> I personally keep about half a dozen back versions of R for the reasons
> others have mentioned and these would include one R-13.x version, one R-
> 12.x version, etc.  I literally use x in the name since only the most
recent
> version in any such series is stored. That is, when a new R-2.13.x comes
out I
> just install it over the existing
> R-2.13.x:
> 
>  Directory of C:\Program Files\R
> 
> 31/03/2010  02:37 PM    <DIR>          R-2.10.x
> 01/06/2010  01:03 PM    <DIR>          R-2.11.x
> 22/03/2011  03:25 PM    <DIR>          R-2.12.x
> 26/04/2011  01:45 PM    <DIR>          R-2.13.x
> 
> 
Do you keep  the RTools version specific to each version of R installed too?
If so, how do you manage that so that each version of R finds the right
version of RTools when it needs it?  

I don't use RTools much, but I need it to install some fo the packages I use
from source since there are no binary distributions for them (for 64 bit
Windows).  I don't typically keep any more than two versions of R on my
machine at any one time, but I don't remove an older version until I have
verified that my R scripts work fine in the latest release.  So usually
there is only one version on my machine, but there will be two for a short
while after a new release.  But, my normal practice, as I describe here,
would be disrupted if R's installer wrote R's bin path to my system path (in
fact, I hate that for any software I use, even though in some cases there's
no way to avoid it).

Thanks

Ted