R help - Dec 2005 - CRAN version branch for Windows packages

Hi Folks,

This query arises out of a call for help from a friend
who has been running R version 1.9 unbder Windows XP,
and wanted advice on using install.packages() in order
to install the Windows binary of the package "Epi".

Since this environment is outside my personal experience,
I could only help in a general way. I did manage to track
his problem down to the fact that package "Epi" did not
come on the scene until R version 2.1 was out, so there
was no "Epi" under

  http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/1.9

which was where his install.packages() looked in the first
instance. Nor under 2.0 of course.

I could not make out from the documentation how (or whether)
one could persuade it to look for the binary under a different
version branch. So I suggested he download the ZIP file and
try with "repos=NULL", as suggested (though without detail)
in the documentation. However, in the end he resolved the
issue by upgrading R to 2.2 which was no doubt a good idea
in its own right.

But this still leaves me wondering (for possible future
reference) how, if one is using an old version of R under
Windows, one can instruct install.packages to look under
a later version for a Windows binary which only came on
the scene later.

With thanks, and best wsihes to all,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 18-Dec-05                                       Time: 18:44:08
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

(Ted Harding) wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> This query arises out of a call for help from a friend
> who has been running R version 1.9 unbder Windows XP,
> and wanted advice on using install.packages() in order
> to install the Windows binary of the package "Epi".
> 
> Since this environment is outside my personal experience,
> I could only help in a general way. I did manage to track
> his problem down to the fact that package "Epi" did not
> come on the scene until R version 2.1 was out, so there
> was no "Epi" under
> 
>   http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/1.9
> 
> which was where his install.packages() looked in the first
> instance. Nor under 2.0 of course.
> 
> I could not make out from the documentation how (or whether)
> one could persuade it to look for the binary under a different
> version branch. So I suggested he download the ZIP file and
> try with "repos=NULL", as suggested (though without detail)
> in the documentation. However, in the end he resolved the
> issue by upgrading R to 2.2 which was no doubt a good idea
> in its own right.
> 
> But this still leaves me wondering (for possible future
> reference) how, if one is using an old version of R under
> Windows, one can instruct install.packages to look under
> a later version for a Windows binary which only came on
> the scene later.
Ted, if R is recent enough to support this install.packages arguments, 
something like
   install.packages("Epi",
     contriburl = "http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/contrib/2.2")
should do the trick.

Anyway, R-2.2.x binary packages are not compatible with R-1.9.x (AFAIR) 
and we already know that R-2.3.x binary packages won't be usable under 
R-2.2.x.

Best,
Uwe



> With thanks, and best wsihes to all,
> Ted.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
> Date: 18-Dec-05                                       Time: 18:44:08
> ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
> 
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