R help - Jun 2005 - Setting environment variables (installation problem)

Dear All,

Is it possible under WinXP to set the R binary path (...\R\bin)
as an environment variable during installation?
(rw2010.exe)

The problem is that I've written a program that needs to know the path
of Rterm.exe during installation.
At the moment the user can't choose the R installation path 
("/DIR={pf}\\R /SILENT").

If I would know where the user install R the InnoSetup part would be 
really simple:
Root: HKLM; Subkey: "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session 
Manager\Environment"; ValueType: string; ValueName: "PATH";
ValueData:
"{olddata};{app}\R\bin"
(or something like that)

(R-FAQ for Windows)
The R-FAQ#2.5 tells me that I'm able to specify the path where R will be 
installed but nothing about the environment variable.
And the R-FAQ#2.16 is not what I need.

Duncan Murdoch wrote 
(http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/07/1272.html) that it is not 
recommended to edit the R.iss manually and it seems to me to hard to 
edit the makefiles for my problem.

An other possibility seems to be to read and edit the 
HKLM\Software\R-core\R\InstallPath registry entry, but is there no 
easier way to do that?

Thanks for any hints (and sorry for my english).



Thomas

It is unclear what you want to do, but it is clear that this is not the 
appropriate list (see the posting guide) and that your subject line is 
misleading.

Note that the path to R is normally entered in the registry during 
installation, but this is optional as some users have a read-only 
registry.  So using the registry is not a general solution.

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Thomas Unternaehrer wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> Is it possible under WinXP to set the R binary path (...\R\bin)
> as an environment variable during installation?
> (rw2010.exe)
> The problem is that I've written a program that needs to know the path
> of Rterm.exe during installation.
> At the moment the user can't choose the R installation path
> ("/DIR={pf}\\R /SILENT").
>
> If I would know where the user install R the InnoSetup part would be
> really simple:
> Root: HKLM; Subkey: "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
> Manager\Environment"; ValueType: string; ValueName: "PATH";
ValueData:
> "{olddata};{app}\R\bin"
> (or something like that)
>
> (R-FAQ for Windows)
> The R-FAQ#2.5 tells me that I'm able to specify the path where R will
be
> installed but nothing about the environment variable.
> And the R-FAQ#2.16 is not what I need.
>
> Duncan Murdoch wrote
> (http://tolstoy.newcastle.edu.au/R/help/04/07/1272.html) that it is not
> recommended to edit the R.iss manually and it seems to me to hard to
> edit the makefiles for my problem.
>
> An other possibility seems to be to read and edit the
> HKLM\Software\R-core\R\InstallPath registry entry, but is there no
> easier way to do that?
>
> Thanks for any hints (and sorry for my english).
-- 
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