R help - Oct 2012 - Having two different versions of a package in the same R installation

Dear list,

I am making some comparisons of two versions of the lme4 package: The CRAN
version and the R-Forge version. For the moment I have two different R
installations, each with a different version of lme4. However it would be
convenient if I could have the same version within the same R installation such
that I can run a code chunk on one lme4 version and immediately after run the
same code chunk on another lme4 version. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Best regards
S?ren

So if you have both loaded in the same instance of R, how will R know
which version of lmer or other functions that you want to run?

It seems cleanest to me to have the 2 different instances of R running
like you do now.  The other option would be to change all the names
(exported ones anyways) in one version and change that package name as
well.  Then you would have 2 different package names with different
exported function names.

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:18 PM, S?ren H?jsgaard <sorenh at math.aau.dk>
wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I am making some comparisons of two versions of the lme4 package: The CRAN
version and the R-Forge version. For the moment I have two different R
installations, each with a different version of lme4. However it would be
convenient if I could have the same version within the same R installation such
that I can run a code chunk on one lme4 version and immediately after run the
same code chunk on another lme4 version. Does anyone know if this is possible?
>
> Best regards
> S?ren
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org 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.


-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
538280 at gmail.com

Install the two versions in two different *libraries* and update
.libPaths() to prioritize one over the other. /Henrik

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:18 PM, S?ren H?jsgaard <sorenh at math.aau.dk>
wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I am making some comparisons of two versions of the lme4 package: The CRAN
version and the R-Forge version. For the moment I have two different R
installations, each with a different version of lme4. However it would be
convenient if I could have the same version within the same R installation such
that I can run a code chunk on one lme4 version and immediately after run the
same code chunk on another lme4 version. Does anyone know if this is possible?
>
> Best regards
> S?ren
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org 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.

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 4:18 PM, S?ren H?jsgaard <sorenh at math.aau.dk>
wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I am making some comparisons of two versions of the lme4 package: The CRAN
version and the R-Forge version. For the moment I have two different R
installations, each with a different version of lme4. However it would be
convenient if I could have the same version within the same R installation such
that I can run a code chunk on one lme4 version and immediately after run the
same code chunk on another lme4 version. Does anyone know if this is possible?
>
Install the two versions into two different R libraries:

install.packages("my.package", repos = ..., lib = ...) # 1st repo/lib
install.packages("my.package", repos = ..., lib = ...) # 2nd repo/lib

library(my.package, lib.loc = ...) # 1st lib
# use it
detach(my.package, unload = TRUE)
# next line may or may not be needed
library.dynam.unload("my.package", system.file(package =
"my.package"))
library(my.package, lib.loc = ...) # 2nd lib

-- 
Statistics & Software Consulting
GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com

On 2 October 2012 at 20:18, S?ren H?jsgaard wrote:
| I am making some comparisons of two versions of the lme4 package: The CRAN
version and the R-Forge version. For the moment I have two different R
installations, each with a different version of lme4. However it would be
convenient if I could have the same version within the same R installation such
that I can run a code chunk on one lme4 version and immediately after run the
same code chunk on another lme4 version. Does anyone know if this is possible?


If you use different directories both versions can be installed at the same
time. The one being found first when going down .libPaths() is the default,
the other can be loaded by supplying the path to library().

Dirk

-- 
Dirk Eddelbuettel | edd at debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com