Wishlist: write R's bin path to the PATH variable and remove the version string in the installation dir under Windows
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.duncan at gmail.com> wrote:
On 11-05-03 11:25 PM, Yihui Xie wrote:
1. "Few Windows users use these commands" does not imply they are not useful, and I have no idea how many Windows users really use them. How do you run "R CMD build" when you build R packages under Windows? You don't write "C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/bin/i386/R.exe CMD build", do you?
I have unusual needs, because I use 2 or 3 different versions of R every day. ?But if you're interested, the way I do it is to set up shell commands that reset the PATH appropriate to the version of R I want to use. A more usual user who always wants to use just one version from the command line could modify the PATH appropriately. ?I don't object to that, I just object to having R do it to unsuspecting users, because as Simon said, messing with the PATH can cause problems, and it's difficult for the R installer to know if messing with yours will cause trouble for you. In another message you asked about using Sweave. ?I almost never use Sweave() in R or "R CMD Sweave" at the command line; I have an appropriate command configured into my editors, and I run it from there. ?The PATH does not need to be involved.
I think the reason we have to mess with the PATH variable for each single software package is that Windows is Not Unix, so you may hate Windows instead of a package that modifies your PATH variable. For the choice of i386 and x64, you can let the user decide which bin path to use. I believe the number of users who frequently switch back and forth is fairly small.
I already pointed out why that is inappropriate for a lot of users.
The batchfiles handle this using Rversions.bat. Without arguments it lists the available R versions and with an argument it makes that the current version of R so that Rgui.bat, R.bat, invoke that version. Rversions.bat works by running the appropriate RSetReg.exe utility (which is a utility that is included in every R distribution). Of course if you just want to run a specific version of Rgui each version has a separate icon on the desktop so one can select the version of interest that way too. I personally keep about half a dozen back versions of R for the reasons others have mentioned and these would include one R-13.x version, one R-12.x version, etc. I literally use x in the name since only the most recent version in any such series is stored. That is, when a new R-2.13.x comes out I just install it over the existing R-2.13.x: Directory of C:\Program Files\R 31/03/2010 02:37 PM <DIR> R-2.10.x 01/06/2010 01:03 PM <DIR> R-2.11.x 22/03/2011 03:25 PM <DIR> R-2.12.x 26/04/2011 01:45 PM <DIR> R-2.13.x
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