[R] packages

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, Uwe Ligges wrote:

> Perez Martin, Agustin wrote:
> 
> > Hello every body, I am new in this list and I am Spanish (excuses for my
> > English)
> > 
> > I have a lot of versions of R (under windows) and I want to know the mode to
> > use the packages of these versions without download any more.
> > It takes me more time because I have all the packages that there are in
> > CRAN.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Agustin Perez
> 
> In principle, you can use *some* of the packages that were compiled for 
> an old version of R, *but*
> a) some other packages need to be recompiled,
> b) you might have outdated versions of some packages given you use those 
> that have been installed some time ago for an outdated version of R.

And to add to that, we don't know which are which, as we don't test old 
versions of packages with current versions of R.

I would be really surprised that you needed all the CRAN packages.  But if 
you do, you can just select all the packages in the scrolling list, or do 
something like

> install.packages(CRAN.packages()[,1])

to reinstall them all.  It might be better to download all the zip files 
(I use ftp) and install them as needed  (which is what I do when I know I 
will be using my laptop away from an internet connection).


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595