Package management in R
On Sep 29, 2015, at 3:04 PM, Chris Yang wrote:
Thanks David. What if I set up my .libPaths so that all packages (except those installed by default with R) reside in a single location outside of 'Framework' directory? So when I upgrade R to a major version (e.g. 3.x to 3.y), the new version will continue to use packages at that location, would it be OK?
It should be "OK" if you use update.packages( ... , checkBuilt=TRUE), since there are often updates for packages when the changes in R are more than just bug fixes.
David. > > I am not worried about losing older versions or their source files, in > fact, I am concerned with the opposite - having older versions lying > around unused and I want to clear those up. It's good to know that > packages for a current major version get overwritten so no older file > is left dangling. > > > On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 11:30 PM, David Winsemius > <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote: >> >> On Sep 28, 2015, at 10:38 PM, Chris Yang wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> >>> I am new to R and just installed R and RStudio on a Mac. >>> >>> I have a question about managing packages in R. I wonder if there is >>> the need and functionality to periodically clean up packages installed >>> via RStudio, e.g. older versions, files downloaded for installation, >>> etc. Does the update remove the older version completely before >>> installing a new one? And what about installation from source? >>> >>> I ask because Homebrew (a package manager for OS X) keeps older >>> versions of a package and the files necessary for past installations >>> upon updates but it offers a command to clean up these stuff too. I >>> wonder if it is the same for R. >> >> If you have older versions of R in a Framework directory tree, those packages are kept but if you update a package in the current major version it will be over-written. That is not a Mac specific behavior. >> >> You may be able to recover older versions with a Time Machine copy, but I'm not clear why you would want to do so. You can also pull source copies of earlier package version in the CRAN archives. >> >> -- >> David Winsemius >> Alameda, CA, USA >> David Winsemius Alameda, CA, USA