[R] Portable R?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

See the rw-FAQ Q2.6 for a more precise answer than has yet appeared in 
this thread.  A while back (for 2.1.0) some aspects of R were optimized 
for usage from a slow (and possibly read-only) drive.

This does presume that the sites you visit will allow you to run programs 
from an external drive, and in my experience that is often explicitly 
disallowed.

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005, David Mitchell wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> A short time ago, I found
> http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/portable_apps_suite/, which
> contains basically a complete set of office tools that can be run
> *entirely* from a USB key.  The concept is:
> - find a Windows PC
> - put in your USB key
> - run OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim, Nvu, Thunderbird, ... directly from
> your USB key, with no app installation required
> - save your files wherever
> - remove your USB key and leave, with nothing installed on the original PC
>
> As a consultant who battles regularly with limited toolsets at
> customer sites, this strikes me as an extremely handy way of working.
>
> Has anyone managed to setup a base R configuration that runs entirely
> from USB key?  Being a regular user, but no expert, with R, it'd be
> very helpful for me if such a mechanism existed, but I've got no idea
> where to begin in building such a thing.
>
> Thanks in advance for any responses or suggestions

-- 
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