[R] help files for libraries that aren't in the defaults library tree

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Martin Maechler wrote:

> >>>>> "J" == J Andy Royle <jar at oriole.er.usgs.gov> writes:
> 
>     J> Hello, I created a library for a bunch of functions that I use
>     J> frequently so that I dont have to carry duplicate copies around to
>     J> wherever I fire up an R sesssion.  However, I have problems locating
>     J> the help files for those functions.  Here are some details.
> 
> 
> The online help [?.lib.loc  or ?library ..]
> gives the solution:
> >>   `.lib.loc' is a character vector with the
> >>      locations of all library trees that R should use.  It
> >>      is initialized at startup from the environment variable
> >>      `RLIBS', which should be a colon-separated list of
> >>      directories at which R library trees are rooted, and
> >>      `.Library'.
> 


Also, as a general Unix security note, you wouldn't need to be root to
write to the R library tree. A safer alternative is to make that directory
owned by a special user or group, so that selected people can be given the
power to install R libraries but not necessarily to destroy the entire
file system.

	-thomas


Thomas Lumley
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics
University of Washington, Seattle

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