[R] Running R on read-only file system, without temporary directory

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 04/09/2009 3:42 PM, Gábor Csárdi wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I would like to do run R without having write permissions to any
> directory on the system. It seems that I need to modify the R source
> code for this, to make R start without creating a temporary directory.
> 
> So far, so good. But should I expect any more complications? Does R
> really need the temporary directory that much?

Many R functions create temporary files in it.  (There are around 20 
calls to tempfile() and another 20 to tempdir() in the base R sources, 
if my quick grep was right.  I've no idea how many calls there are from 
contributed packages.)  Would R work if these all failed?  I don't know, 
but I'd guess it wouldn't work very well.

Duncan Murdoch