[R] Installing R-packages in Windows

[Mike Marchywka]

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> Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:48:20 +0100
> From: erikl at phonetik.uni-muenchen.de
> To: marchywka at hotmail.com
> CC: r-help at r-project.org; ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de

>
> Hi Mike, Hi Uwe,
>
> thanks for your reply.
> The main thing is that we have mixed OSs. On the one hand we have Linux,
> on the other WinXP. I need the same version of packages and R on both
> systems. Otherwise I cant explain my colleagues why error messages are
> reproduceable on only one system.
> Installing by compiling the .tar.gz-files does work on Linux, but not on
> Win because make is not avaivable :( I already tried.

If you want to do anything on 'dohs where you want to use
the computer to automate data processing, get something
like cygwin- that was probably where my "make" came from. 
You can put that on all the relevant computers
and disto a script or something, that should be allowable. 
Machine specific failures I would think would be quite common
in most settings in any case. 

>
> The disadvantage of install.packages is (if I am not right tell me
> please), that the package is only installed for the local user (and its
> home-Directory ) who is using R at the moment. In my case I need to
> install for all local users. Is there a way to do that automated with
> install.packages ?

Well, without actually knowing myself I would again just
suggest giving people a script or if it is just one
machine that you use install multiple times/copies even
if it is a bit of a waste and could create inconsistencies.

In any case, however, you should be able to pick a library
directory for R. I've never tried to point mine
but presumably all the installs could point to the same
one. Permissions may need to be modified but usually these
things are read-execute world so it may not be a factor. 


>
> I might think about Uwe's proposal to install the latest R with the
> latest packages. But there's still that problem with installing for ALL
> users :S
> I am unable to do that - even if I can use a local repo.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Erik
>
> On 12/14/2010 06:17 PM, Mike Marchywka wrote:
> >
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> > ( hotmail just randomly decides not to prefix original text, my comments below)
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> > ----------------------------------------
> > Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:36:11 +0100
> > From: erikl at phonetik.uni-muenchen.de
> > To: r-help at r-project.org

> >
> >
> > Hi there,
> > I have the following problem and I hope somebody might help me.
> >
> > First of all: I am using WinXP SP3 (english and/or german) with R in
> > Version 2.10.0.
> >
> > Now I am trying to install some packages but unfortunately I am getting
> > a weird error. No matter which package I am trying to install - I nearly
> > get the same error.
> >
> > It looks like this:
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > C:\Program Files\R\R-2.10.0\bin>R CMD INSTALL
> > %SystemDrive%\rPAcsTemp\car_2.0-2.
> > zip
> > Warning in rawToChar(block[seq_len(ns)]) :
> > truncating string with embedded nul:
> >
> > MEEEE::::::
> >
> >
> > I used to build all from source then that stopped working and I have
> > seen others here complain about installation failures. I have had good
> > luck with what others have suggested, and use install.packages()
> >
> > It goes into a script ok, for example, ( note that "myR" is my
> > script that invokes R but you can change etc). This points to ucla
> > mirror, writes a script into $tf to install $pkf, installs $pkf by
> > running the gerated script, and then shows you the results and deletes junk
> > ( normally you want to check error codes before deling "junk" however)
> >
> > tf="$$_temp"
> > cat -<< DUMMTY> $tf
> > options(repos=c("http://cran.stat.ucla.edu"))
> > install.packages(c("$pkf"),dep=TRUE)
> > DUMMTY
> > echo executing
> > cat "$tf"
> > myR -run "$tf"
> >
> > echo removing $tf
> > rm "$tf"
> > echo removing R output
> > cat "$tf".Rout
> > rm "$tf".Rout
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