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Unusual Error Loading tidyverse

4 messages · Kevin E. Thorpe, Jeff Newmiller, Conklin, Mike (GfK)

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I thought I would close the loop on this. It was really weird and I don?t understand everything that went on.

First, it was indeed the case that the main library was not writeable so packages were being installed in a user library.

Here is where it gets confusing to me. Both library paths did appear in .libPaths(). I could not figure out where that was being set since there was no user .Rprofile and Rprofile.site was not modified. To start over I got the user to delete the local library and started R as an administrator and forced installation in the main library with the lib argument. However, even with dependencies=TRUE in install.packages() everything was not getting installed. I then had the user start RStudio as an admin and use the install packages from the menu, again specifying the main library and asking for dependencies. When this was done, many additional packages were then installed that were not installed when running the native R application. Eventually, after that, tidyverse loaded (I realize it is a wrapper to load a bunch of other packages). I also had the user install rms (which we use) and again, various bits did not get installed and had to be manually requested (I don?t remember which ones).

Anyway, in the end we got his system functioning. I realize that running as admin to install packages is probably not best practice, but it was the only way I saw to get things working. I _think_ some of the problems were because his home directory is synced with OneDrive and the user library path was to a OneDrive folder.

I am often shocked by the difficulties students have installing packages. They manage to get errors that I have never seen in all my user of using R. On a Win10 box of my own, I installed R and packages with no difficulties so, naturally am surprised when things go this haywire with an installation.

That?s my story. Hope it was entertaining. :-)

Kevin

  
    
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Sad, more like.

fortunes::fortune(337)

You would have done just as well to delete the user library and let R prompt you to re-create it if things were that bad. Note that the default R configuration always looks first in the user library and only falls back to the system library if the desired package is not found in the user library. In most user-administered R installations you are better off acting as though the system library wasn't there.
On October 7, 2021 7:56:05 AM PDT, Kevin Thorpe <kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca> wrote:

  
    
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Nice fortune.

In retrospect, maybe it would have worked to re-build the user library. Things were acting so strangely to me I opted for the direct, if more dangerous approach. :-)

  
    
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My experience is that the combination of OneDrive and R leads to lack of productivity.

--
W. Michael Conklin
EVP Marketing & Data Sciences
GfK 
M +1 612 567 8287

-----Original Message-----
From: R-help <r-help-bounces at r-project.org> On Behalf Of Kevin Thorpe
Sent: Thursday, October 7, 2021 10:50 AM
To: Jeff Newmiller <jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us>
Cc: R Help Mailing List <r-help at r-project.org>
Subject: Re: [R] Unusual Error Loading tidyverse



Nice fortune.

In retrospect, maybe it would have worked to re-build the user library. Things were acting so strangely to me I opted for the direct, if more dangerous approach. :-)
--
Kevin E. Thorpe
Head of Biostatistics,  Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC) Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael?s Hospital Assistant Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health University of Toronto
email: kevin.thorpe at utoronto.ca  Tel: 416.864.5776  Fax: 416.864.3016

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