[R] Is R portable?

[Bert Gunter]

On Windows anyway, R can be located in any directory including one on a
flash drive). R can also be set up to make no use of the registry (again --
Windows only), so AFAICS the answer is yes, and it's trivial to do. I would
be surprised if this were not true in other OS's, too. R is just an
executable with supporting libraries that can be located and run from
anywhere. Of course, various configuration details (file locations, language
environment, graphics options,...) must be set to agree with the particular
computer hardware and software on which the flash drive runs, but that is
inevitable (if R was told it should use a cyrillic character set for
Russian, it won't automatically switch to French when the flash drive is
stuck into a French computer).

If I am wrong about any of this, **PLEASE CORRECT**

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Statistics


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of Tom Backer Johnsen
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 8:03 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] Is R portable?

Recently I came across an interesting web site: 
http://portableapps.com/.  The idea is simple, this is software that 
is possible to install and run on some type of USB memory, a stick or 
one of these hard disks.  I can think of a number of situations where 
this could be handy.  In addition memory sticks are getting cheaper 
and more powerful by the day.

So:  Is it possible to run R off one of these sticks?

I am also informed that it is possible to run Latex in this manner.

Tom

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