[R] installing the next version of R while in an older version

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, Martin Wegmann wrote:

> Hello, 
> 
> On Friday 14 November 2003 23:58, William.Burrows at ec.gc.ca wrote:
> > Hello -
> > I am a fairly new user of R. I currently have R1.7 installed. I tried to
> > install the KernSmooth package but a message tells me I need R1.8. Is there

Your installation of R 1.7.x should have KernSmooth installed! It is a 
recommended package.  The later version available only makes use of the 
new documentation features of R 1.8.x.

> > a way to update to R1.8 while in R1.7 in the same manner that I can use
> > "update.packages", or do I have to install R1.8 in a separate directory and
> > re-install the many packages I have already installed in R1.7? Thanks in
> > advance for your help -
> 
> which operating system are you using? 
> 
> I only can tell it for Linux
> you have to install R 1.8.0 the "usual" way, not inside R
> your previously installed R packages should be still there after your upgrade. 
> 
> I assume it is +/- the same as in windows

Not quite (it will install into a parallel directory) but this is 
covered in the rw-FAQ.

Note that quite a few packages need to be re-installed for 1.8.x (if 
installed under a version before 1.8.0).

Also please note there is no R 1.7 and no R 1.8: try looking more closely.

-- 
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