[R] Problem updating packages

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 9/18/07, Vladimir Eremeev <wl2776 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Sergey Goriatchev wrote:
> >
> > Hello, everybody
> >
> > I have R 2.5.1 now installed on a laptop with Windows Vista Home
> > Premium. I have problems updating the packages. Here is what I get at
> > the prompt when I try to update:
> >
[...]
> > C:\Users\Sergey\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpbQJHsb\downloaded_packages
> > updating HTML package descriptions
> > Warning in install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l,
> >
>
> contriburl = contriburl,  :
>         'lib = "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-25~1.1/library"' is not writable
> Error in install.packages(update[instlib == l, "Package"], l,
> contriburl = contriburl,  :
>        unable to install packages
> >
>
> The function has written you what was wrong.
> "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-25~1.1/library"' was not writable
>
> You should install new packages either running R with administrator
> privilegies, or installing them to another directory, writable for ordinary
> user.
>

On my Vista system I placed R in %userprofile%\Documents\R\R-2.6.0
and it works ok.  I imagine that placing it in C:\R\R-2.6.0
would work too but would have to try it.  Actually even
C:\Program Files\R\R-2.6.0 works for me provided the user library is
in %userprofile%\R\win-library\2.6
which is where R 2.6.0 tries to put it but not if I try to use
c:\Program Files\R\R-2.6.0\library

It was mainly building packages that caused me a problem (which
I gather you are not currently doing -- only installing them from binary) in
my initial setup which is why I moved R to its current location.  I
also put the source directories for my packages in %userprofile%\R

By the way, if you want to switch between several versions of R
that are all on your system RSetReg.exe must be run elevated.
In http://batchfiles.googlecode.com there is a Windows javascript
program, Rversions.hta, which I have updated to work on Vista and
will do that. Run it from Windows command line without args. See the
README.  You can download it directly here:
   http://batchfiles.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rversions.hta
I have found it useful while trying different versions of R on my Vista
system.