[R-pkgs] Windows batchfiles 0.7-1

[Gabor Grothendieck]

A new version of the Windows batchfiles is available.

CHANGES

The key change is the new R.bat utility.  R.bat has a new interface
and extended functionality covering many of the other prior utilities.
 (These older utilities are no longer needed and have been removed.)

Unlike R.bat which requires no configuration the new Rpathset.bat
utility is configured by manually changing the Windows batch SET
statements in it.  The main advantage is just that it is very simple
internally which may be advantageous in some situations involving
customization.

A new pdf document accompanies the utilties providing more detail.

OVERVIEW

These are self contained independent no-install Windows batch,
javascript and .hta files. Just place any that you wish to use on your
Windows PATH.

R.bat

R.bat allows one to run R without setting any environment variables,
registry keys or any modification of the Windows path.  Just download
this utility, place it in your Windows path and then to launch
Rgui.exe from the Windows cmd line do this:

   R gui

R.bat locates R, MiKTeX and Rtools using the registry or heuristics
and then runs the subcommand indicated by the first argument.

In addition to the gui subcommand, the following subcommands are
available: cd, cmd, dir, gui, help, ls, path, R, script, show, SetReg,
tools, touch.

Some examples are:

R -- run R.exe
R gui -- run Rgui.exe
R CMD build mypkg -- run Rcmd.exe build mypkg
R script myScript.R -- run Rscript.exe myScript.R

R dir -- list directories in R_ROOT, typically those in C:\Program Files\R
R ls -- same
R help -- help info
R show -- show R_ variable values used (R_ROOT, R_HOME, R_VER, R_ARCH, etc.)

R path -- temporarily add R, MiKTeX and Rtools to the Windows path
R tools -- similar but only add MiKTeX and Rtools to the Windows path

Except for R touch (which updates the date on your R_HOME directory)
and R SetReg (which calls RSetReg.exe to update the registry with your
R version), R.bat makes no permanent changes to your system.

Rpathset.bat

Rpathset.bat temporarily sets the Windows path to R, Rtools and MiKTeX
based on SET statements that the user can configure manually.  It is
an alternative to R.bat that lacks R.bat's "no configuration" nature
but may be preferred in some situations due to its internal
simplicity.

Also Rpathset.bat is more likely to work on systems that have not been
tested given its simplicity.  (The utilities were tested on 32 bit
Windows Vista and 64 bit Windows 8 systems.)

Other

Other commands which continue to be available are copydir.bat,
movedir.bat, el.js, clip2r.js and find-miktex.hta .  These copy and
move R libraries, run a command in elevated mode (i.e. as
Administrator), copy the clipboard to a running R instance and find
MiKTeX.

More Info

The newly created sqldf discussion list will now be used for
discussion of the batch files as well.

Home Page: http://batchfiles.googlecode.com
Discuss: http://groups.google.com/group/sqldf  ** NEW **

Download: http://cran.r-project.org/contrib/extra/batchfiles
SVN: https://code.google.com/p/batchfiles/source


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