[R] Change in downloading packages

[Peter Dalgaard]

Jim Lemon <jim.lemon at uts.edu.au> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> I sent an earlier message concerning this, but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. 
> Up until about a month ago, I downloaded packages by clicking on the filename 
> of the package. Now this action leads me to a directory listing, e.g.:
> 
> drwxr-xr-x hornik/users      0 2002-03-20 18:00:54 npmc/
> -rw-r--r-- hornik/users    314 2002-03-20 11:33:42 npmc/DESCRIPTION
> -rw-r--r-- hornik/users    202 2002-03-20 11:49:40 npmc/INDEX
> -rwxr--r-- hornik/users     99 2002-03-20 12:18:34 npmc/build
> drwxr-xr-x hornik/users      0 2002-03-20 12:18:15 npmc/man/
> ...
> 
> from which I cannot download anything. It now appears necessary to FTP to:
> 
> cran.r-project.org
> 
> (or a suitable mirror) change to the:
> 
> pub/R/src/contrib
> 
> directory and download the package. While I appreciate the functionality of 
> install.packages(), one has to be connected to the Internet to use it, and I 
> have one old laptop that I use for remote work that has no such connection. 
> Downloading the source package is much more convenient than rebuilding a 
> package myself from the source code to upgrade this PC. I think that this 
> change should at least be announced with a suggestion for a suitable 
> workaround for those who need the actual source package.
> 
> R-1.8.0 on
> RedHat Linux 7.2

The files on CRAN are still .tar.gz files, so I suspect that your
browser is just trying to be smart (have you switched/upgraded it
lately?). 

Normally (dep. upon browser, of course), you can just right-click on
the link and select "Save link target as..." or shift/left-click.

-- 
   O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Blegdamsvej 3  
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     2200 Cph. N   
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)             FAX: (+45) 35327907