[R] Local library under Windoze.

[Rolf Turner]

Continuing to try to customize my environment for using R under
Windoze, I experimented with installing a package from CRAN in a
local library ``Lib''.

I created the directory ``Lib'' in the folder in which R starts,
and then executed

	> install.packages("abind",lib="Lib")

Everything went according to form (I got prompted to choose a mirror,
etc.) until the end of the show when I got the warning message

Warning: unable to move temporary installation 'C:\Documents and
Settings\rolf\My Documents\Rstuff\Lib\file5f906952\Lib\file5f906952\abind to
'C:\Documents and Settings\rolf\My Documents\Rstuff\Lib\file5f906952\Lib\abind'

[I have folded the foregoing warning --- which came out as a single line ---
to make it fit in an 80 character wide screen.]

[I was also told that the ``downloaded packages are in ...'', and when
I looked in the indicated folder the zip file was indeed there ---
but a fat lot of good that does me.]

The warning was more like an *error*. When this had finished, the folder
Lib was empty; no sign of the file5f906952 stuff, or anything else.

Can anyone explain to me what's going on/wrong?  There is no problem
apparently if I do

	> install.packages("abind")

which installs into the ``system'' library.  In current circumstances
this is good enough --- since I have write permission on the ``system''
library, I can just use that.  So this is, for the moment, an
academic question.  Still the facility seems to be *there* for
installing to a local user-owned library, and it seems not to be
working for me, and I'd like to figure out why.

I thought for a moment that I'd found the problem a little while
back, when I noticed that ``Lib'' was ``Readonly''.  But then
when I tried to change that --- ``unclicking'' the Readonly box
in the ``Properties'' of Lib --- I found that I couldn't.  When
I looked at the Properties again, I found it was back to being
Readonly again.  (With no warning or error message of any kind.)
Some further investigation seemed to indicate that *all* folders
are Readonly.  (Is this really as it should be?  And if so, what's
the point of having this property for folders?)

Can anyone enlighten me?

				cheers,

					Rolf Turner
					rolf at math.unb.ca