[R] contributed packages not found

Marc Schwartz
Tue, 02 Dec 2003 21:38:53 -0000

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 15:28, Hank Stevens wrote:
>    Windows 2000, R 1.6.1
>    When I try use the menu to download and install new packages, the
>    result looks like this:
>    {a <- CRAN.packages()
>    + install.packages(select.list(a[,1],,TRUE), .libPaths()[1],
>    available=a)}
>    trying URL
> `[1]http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/PACKAGES'
>    Error in download.file(url = paste(contriburl, "PACKAGES", sep
> "/"),
>    :
>    cannot open: HTTP status was `404'
>    Is this no longer the path to the packages? Can I fix this without
>    updating R?
>    Many thanks,
>    Hank Stevens


Quoting from http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/ReadMe:

"Packages for R < 1.7.0 are no longer available at this location for
various reasons. Binary packages for the outdated versions R-1.6.x
have to be downloaded from subdirectory ./1.6 manually."

You will need to go to

http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/1.6/

and download the ZIP files directly. Then use the Install from Local Zip
File option on the menu.

Better yet, would be to update to 1.8.1, since you are a few versions
out of date.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz