[R] R and packages

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 2/20/2006 8:07 PM, Erin Hodgess wrote:
 > Dear R People:
 >
 > Here is yet another strange problem.
 >
 > I'm using R in one of my classes.  However, the computer lab has 
something
 > called "Deep Freeze" and the students cannot save anything to the 
hard drive.
 >
 > I had R installed and things were working well.  They would save their
 > .Rdata files to disks.
 >
 > Now, we need to add more packages.  We can't download and we can't
 > bring them in via zip files (already tried both!)  When the zip files
 > are expanded, of course they build new directories......

You can probably use .libPaths() to add a new install location that is 
writeable.  You'll likely get a few error messages because R can't 
update the help indices, but the packages should be available.
 >
 > I'm completely annoyed because learning to download packages
 > and installing them from local zips are actually important tasks!
 > We're also losing good teaching/learning time!
 >
 > Anyhow, what I would like to do is produce a sort of combination R
 > installation exe with our extra libraries as part of the package.

You could also do this, if you have the tools installed to do a build. 
See the R Installation and Administration manual, Installing R Under 
Windows, Building from Source, Building the Installer (section 3.1.9 in 
the PDF version).  You can either build with extra packages from source, 
or make an image from an installed copy.  In either case you'll need to 
install a lot of build tools, but fewer for the second option.

Duncan Murdoch

 >
 > Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be done, please?
 >
 > This is R for Windows, Version 2.2.1
 >
 > Thanks for any help!  Sorry about the totally weird problem!
 >
 > Sincerely,
 > Erin Hodgess
 > Associate Professor
 > Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences
 > University of Houston - Downtown
 > mailto: hodgess at gator.uhd.edu
 >
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