dear R experts: I am trying to install packages in OSX, R 2.8.1. Since I do this about every 2 years, I have completely forgotten it. However, this should not be difficult: http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=getting-started:installation:packages nice document. beautiful method. so, I start with update.packages() the final message tells me that it saved all the packages into /var/folders/Ia/IaQbr8K+GQ8DqdaGMAC18++++yU/-Tmp-/RtmpjRkMV7/downloaded_packages/ . not exactly user-friendly. at this point, I don't know whether they were also installed or just downloaded. the same happens when I do an install.package("plm", dependencies=T). would it not make sense if the package were installed in the standard R library location at this point, and the final message to tell me that the package was indeed installed, and not about the temporary directory? [I suspect that it actually did the install, so this is just a "final message" issue.] just a suggestion... [and thanks everybody for all the help yesterday. now back to my moments.] regards, /ivo