[R] R and packages

[Liaw, Andy]

From: Thomas Lumley
> 
> On Mon, 20 Feb 2006, 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......
> 
> I would suggest making this the system administrator's 
> problem.  Either 
> your site really has a policy that would prohibit R packages 
> (in which 
> case trying to subvert it may not be a good idea) or it is 
> exactly the 
> sort of problem that system administrators are supposed to solve.
> 
> Distrust for R binary (and even source) packages is not a completely 
> unreasonable attitude. They can execute arbitrary code on 
> your computer 
> and, in contrast to R itself, you usually have no real 
> knowledge of who 
> wrote them.
> 
>  	-thomas
> 
> 
> 
> > 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.
> >
> > Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be done, please?
> >
> > This is R for Windows, Version 2.2.1

In case the sysadmin refuses to make it his/her problem, this would be a
good alternative.  It's not hard to build a custom R installer that includes
packages of your choice.  It's all documented.  Look in the R-admin manual
(e.g., http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-admin.html) and search for
EXTRA_PKGS.

Andy



> > 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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> 
> Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
> tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle
> 
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