[R-SIG-Mac] Package installation: setting default library

[Prof Brian Ripley]

What is 'somehat obscure' about (?install.packages)

See Also:

      'installed.packages', 'remove.packages'

      See 'download.file' for how to handle proxies and other options to
      monitor file transfers.

?  Indeed, where would you expect to find information about downloading 
files if not under download.file?

Far too often I think we get no credit for implementing such arcane 
things, nor for documenting them.


On Mon, 5 Jan 2009, Sean Davis wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Carl Witthoft <carl at witthoft.com> wrote:
>
>> Honest, I tried to find notes in the archives on this one.  Maybe I used
>> the wrong keywords.
>>
>> With sys 10.4.11, Intel iMac, I installed R 2.8.1 directly from the dmg
>> installer package.
>>
>> After that, I tried to install some R packages.  Due to port blocking at
>> work, I have to download the files, unpack, and install from my local
>> directory.
>>
>> Using the R.app GUI, I selected "Install at System Level" and get an error
>> message something like
>>
>> " 'lib' variable not found, using default {my local Library/Frameworks
>> directory}..."
>>
>> The default value of libPaths was
>>
>> [1] "/Users/carl/Library/R/2.8/library"
>> [2] "/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/2.8/Resources/library"
>>
>> If I ran the command
>>
>> R> .libPaths(.libPaths()[2])
>>
>> {thus removing the reference to my local tree}
>>
>> then the GUI properly installed to the system library tree.
>>
>> So, is there a better, or simpler, way to make this happen?
>>
>
> Why not simply set up the appropriate http proxy?  The information is
> included in the somewhat obscure location in the help page for
> "download.file".  Alternatively, there is some information on the topic in
> the Windows FAQ.  This should allow you to use the usual tools for
> installing packages.
>
> Sean
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595