[R] Question according on new package installation test in R 2.11

[Jochen Knaus]

Hi all,

the package load test in R 2.11.0 is nice, but not disablable with 
function install.packages().

This is a problem for me, as I install many (>100) global packages with 
an R script as root in a multiuser environment for each new R version on 
the machines in our institute.

As root is not allowed to start several services, so several packages 
cannot be loaded correctly as root itself (e.g. "Rmpi" installs 
correctly, but cannot be loaded as root, as root is not allowed to start 
a cluster). This would not be dramatic if there would not been a 
"00LOCK" folder left in the site-dir afterwards preventing further 
packages to install and has to be removed manually.

On the command line the "R CMD INSTALL" script has an option 
"--no-test-load", which disables the feature of testing (but is using 
the internal function "tools:::.install_packages" for installing 
packages). It seems this behavior is not accessible through the function 
"install.packages", as this functions API didn't change and in the 
depending R source nothing is found.

Is there a way to disable the new load-test with an "install.packages" 
call or another way around the problem? Or a method which does at least 
not produce that 00LOCK file?

Thanks, Jo