[R] problems with packages installation

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On 16/02/2015 07:49, PIKAL Petr wrote:
> Hi Jeff
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jeff Newmiller [mailto:jdnewmil at dcn.davis.CA.us]
>> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 3:56 PM
>> To: PIKAL Petr; r-help at r-project.org
>> Cc: Richard M. Heiberger
>> Subject: RE: [R] problems with packages installation
>>
>> I agree that the PG muddies the water a bit on this topic. However, the
>> web page from which you downloaded the patched version warns:
>>
>> "This is not an official release of R. Please check bugs in this
>> version against the official release before reporting them."
>>
>> When a new version is under  development, the number of bugs often
>> increases temporarily by quite a bit. Any use you make of a patched or
>> development version is at your own risk, and should be undertaken for
>> two reasons only: to address a  specific problem you are having with
>> the released version, or because you want to help test the unreleased
>> version out of the goodness of your heart (bless you). In either case,
>
> Yes, that is why I use devel versions but I was not able to find a bug (yet).
>
>> chatter about bugs you encounter that are not in the released version
>> belongs on R-devel.
>
> It was hard to tell what is the problem. It could be that our IT people silently changed a firewall or something, which would prevent package installation from menu. Far too often I am not able to open some web pages e.g. (https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel) and I do not have power to change it.
>
> However it seems to be that this particular problem is in R menu procedure for installation as I wrote in my previous mail.
>
>>
>> If you can reproduce the problem in a released version, posting on R-
>> help would be more appropriate, but if you are sure it is a bug then
>> filling a report is the right thing to do.
>
> It is hard to reproduce and I believe that the problem is probably already known by R core (I thank them for their marvellous work).

AFAIK it was already fixed in R-devel at the time of posting.

R-devel is 'under development', and at least until it reaches 'alpha' 
status the R-devel list is the place to report problems (if they persist 
for a few days and after checking with the current version).

> For me it is solved by install.packages function.

Actually that is what the menu calls.  The difference is the arguments 
you used (an explicit package rather than NULL for a menu).


>
> Thanks
>
> Best regards
> Petr


-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK