[R] Local library under Windoze.

[Prof Brian Ripley]

This warning is indeed really an error, but do you want all your downloads 
to fail just because one does?  install.packages() behaves the same way on 
Unices.

I was not aware that this works with relative paths for any version of R.
Try using a full path, which always works for me.

If indeed your filesystem is readonly, you will have problems in spades.
But is that box just dark and not ticked?  (That's a lovely Windows 
gotcha that has caught people here many times.)


On Fri, 1 Sep 2006, Rolf Turner wrote:

> 
> 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
> 
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> 

-- 
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