R help - Aug 2006 - R-update - what about packages and ESS?

Hi there,

it seems that if I update R, it doesn't find previously installed packages 
anymore and is also not found by ESS.
Actually the update has been done by our system administrator who assumed 
that there would be no problems with these things (I don't have root 
access to this system) and will perhaps not be too keen on installing
everything else again.
Is there any simple way how ESS and the packages can be connected to the 
new R?

I remember that whenever I updated R on my private computers, I installed 
everything else again as well - but that's certainly not everybodies 
taste...

Best,
Christian


*** --- ***
Christian Hennig
University College London, Department of Statistical Science
Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, phone +44 207 679 1698
chrish at stats.ucl.ac.uk, www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucakche

Without knowing your OS this is hard to answer (and is the wrong list for 
the ESS question).

For Windows users, the packages part is covered in the rw-FAQ.

For Unix-alikes, it all depends how the update was done, but normal 
package update mechanisms (such as RPM) will not wipe out previously 
installed R packages: nor will 'make install'.

In either case you don't need root access to install packages, as you can 
use a private library.  We have things set up so a user's R_LIBS is 
something like

	R_LIBS=~/Rlibrary:/usr/local/Rlibs:/usr/local/BioC

and then install.packages() automatically installs into the user's own 
library (if it has been created).

On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, Christian Hennig wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> it seems that if I update R, it doesn't find previously installed
packages
> anymore and is also not found by ESS.
> Actually the update has been done by our system administrator who assumed 
> that there would be no problems with these things (I don't have root 
> access to this system) and will perhaps not be too keen on installing
> everything else again.
> Is there any simple way how ESS and the packages can be connected to the 
> new R?
> 
> I remember that whenever I updated R on my private computers, I installed 
> everything else again as well - but that's certainly not everybodies 
> taste...
> 
> Best,
> Christian
> 
> 
> *** --- ***
> Christian Hennig
> University College London, Department of Statistical Science
> Gower St., London WC1E 6BT, phone +44 207 679 1698
> chrish at stats.ucl.ac.uk, www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucakche
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
-- 
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

ESS finds R by one of two mechanisms.

If R is in your PATH, then ESS will find it.

Or, if you have explicitly set the emacs variable
inferior-R-program-name, in .emacs, site-start.el, or ess-site.el,
then ESS will find R.

My guess is that you have explicitly set inferior-R-program-name
to your previous version of R.

Rich