[R] updating via CRAN and http

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003 Arne.Muller at aventis.com wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> thanks for the tips on updating packages for 1.8.0. The updating is a real
> problem for me, since I've to do it sort of manually using my web-browser or
> wget. I'm behind a firewall that requires http/ftp authentification (username
> and passwd) for every request it sends to a server outside our intranet.
> Therefore all the nice tools for automatic updating (cran, cpan ...) don't
> for me (I've tried).
> 
> I understand that the non-paranoid rest of the world can't be bothered, but
> is there any intenstion to include such authentification into the update
> procedures of R? I think for ftp it's kind of tricky, but at least for http
> the authentification seems to be straight forward.

It's available for http: see ?download.file, and you can even configure 
that to use wget.

Your comments are very much misplaced: we *have* bothered to provide the 
facilities for you.

-- 
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