Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0811192107020.19044@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 2008-11-19T21:16:56Z
From: Brian Ripley
Subject: Strategy for downloading packages
In-Reply-To: <49247C96.3010504@stats.uwo.ca>
On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> I have a client who wants to install R and a custom package on a machine with
> no internet connection, so he wants to put everything needed on a CDROM and
> install from there.
>
> I've told him how to work out what is needed, but it seems that too much
> manual work is needed: he needs to install the packages from .zip files
> (this is Windows) in the right order so dependencies are met, etc.
I don't think the install order matters for binary packages (on Windows or
elsewhere). install.packages() certainly does not optimize it.
> Is there an automated tool to do this? That is:
The easiest way is to copy a repository to the CD-ROM, and point repos at
that (as a file::// URL). You can even add files and rebuild the PACKAGES
file (using tools::write_PACKAGES).
But if the list of packages never changes, why not just install them in a
separate library and burn that on the CD-ROM?
> - start from an R installation that's working, and then follow the
> dependency tree from a specified list of packages to generate a list of
> packages to download
> - download all the .zip or .tar.gz files for those from CRAN (possibly
> listing the ones that don't exist there, because they are local custom ones)
> - produce a script that can be run to install all of them on a new R
> install.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>
--
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