Dear R-devel list members, For several years, I've created a custom R installer for my students who use Windows. When I test the installer on my own Windows machines, selections in the installation dialogs reflect my previous choices, which I suppose are saved in the Windows registry. I'd like to be able to see what a student who has never installed R before will see, to verify that an installation that takes all defaults in the custom installer produces the desired result. In the past, I've dealt with this problem by finding a Windows machine on which R has never been installed, but that's inconvenient (and, as R proliferates will, I hope, become impossible!). Is there a better approach? Thanks, John -------------------------------- John Fox Senator William McMaster Professor of Social Statistics Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 10:29 -0400, John Fox wrote:> For several years, I've created a custom R installer for my students > who use Windows. When I test the installer on my own Windows machines, > selections in the installation dialogs reflect my previous choices, > which I suppose are saved in the Windows registry. > > I'd like to be able to see what a student who has never installed R > before will see, to verify that an installation that takes all > defaults in the custom installer produces the desired result. In the > past, I've dealt with this problem by finding a Windows machine on > which R has never been installed, but that's inconvenient (and, as R > proliferates will, I hope, become impossible!). Is there a better > approach?I keep a Windows XP virtual machine image around in a 'clean' state for things like this. I spin up the 'clean' image, test what I need to test, and shut down the Windows image without snapshotting it. Regards, - Brian -- Brian G. Peterson http://braverock.com/brian/ Ph: 773-459-4973 IM: bgpbraverock
On 20/07/2011 10:29 AM, John Fox wrote:> Dear R-devel list members, > > For several years, I've created a custom R installer for my students who use > Windows. When I test the installer on my own Windows machines, selections in > the installation dialogs reflect my previous choices, which I suppose are > saved in the Windows registry. > > I'd like to be able to see what a student who has never installed R before > will see, to verify that an installation that takes all defaults in the > custom installer produces the desired result. In the past, I've dealt with > this problem by finding a Windows machine on which R has never been > installed, but that's inconvenient (and, as R proliferates will, I hope, > become impossible!). Is there a better approach?The settings are saved to the registry by the installer, Inno Setup, and restored automatically (for most of them), or using its "GetPreviousData" function (for the R specific ones). I don't think there is a way to tell the installer to ignore the previous data, but there might be. I believe if you uninstall R then the settings will be forgotten, because the settings are saved in locations like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\R for Windows 2.13.0_is1 in string values named "Inno Setup: *" for the ones used internally, and "Inno Setup Codefile: *" for the ones specific to R. It's probably okay to delete that whole key and then it will forget the old settings, but that seems risky. There's a command line option to the installer called "/SAVEINF" which saves the settings to a file and "/LOADINF" which loads them from a file, but I don't see how to tell it to just ignore the registry settings. Duncan Murdoch