Hi Joakim, Please keep ess-help in the loop since the discussion originated there. I'm cc'ing the list back.
> Le 12 janv. 2020 à 19:31, Joakim Frögren <joa...@frogren.se> a écrit : > > Hi Vincent, > > Thank you so much for your very informative replies to my questions! I am > very grateful to you for making this effort. This seems to be a great > community, and since I am so new to this field this gives me some comfort and > confidence. Now, based on what you write I have some additional questions > that I would really appreciate if you could look into when you have time. > >> Do you use CRAN R. I think the general consensus in the R community (at >> least the "core" community) is that there is no advantage in using homebrew >> R. Furthermore, you will find it more difficult to get help in the official >> mailing lists if you don't use CRAN R. > > No, unfortunately I did not install R from https://cran.r-project.org/ but I > realize now that I should have done that. Instead I installed it by writing > 'brew install r' in the terminal. In addition to R also installed a few > other things this way after reading on some threads that they were necessary > for R in order for it to function properly. Now, when I write 'brew deps r', > it lists the following: gcc, gettext, gmp, isl, jpeg, libmpc, libpng, mpfr, > openblas, pcre, readline, xz. I suppose before installing CRAN R I should > uninstall my current version of R, right? From Homebrew this seems possible > with the command 'brew uninstall r', but do I also need to uninstall some or > all of the dependencies? Hum, perhaps. I make a very limited use of brew myself. With CRAN R, the only things you need "for it to function properly" is XCode and the XCode command-line tools *if you want/need to compile packages from source*. You may also find useful to install XQuartz for some graphic devices. In any case, all the relevant info for R on macOS is at http://mac.r-project.org. > >> If you allow the shameless plug, climb on my back and use my distribution of >> Emacs for macOS bundled with ESS, AUCTeX and some other goodies. You'll have >> something that works out of the box (and that I use daily myself) and that >> fixes some of the problems you have (see below). >> https://vigou3.gitlab.io/emacs-modified-macos/ > > I am considering to climb on your back, since you seem so knowledgeable and > your distribution so safe, but I also have some doubts. I will try to explain > my concerns here briefly. Now, an important reason I decided to finally try > out Emacs as a text editor (and much more!) relates to the following guide by > Kieran Healy. With him as a guide Emacs seemed safe enough to try out > considering the limited computer skills I have. Please check out Figure 5.1 > on page 23 in his guide. This illustrates the workflow that I strive for. It > is thus very important for me to be able to continue to write my academic > texts in plaintext initially, and not LaTeX. It is also important for me to > be able to use BibDesk in combination with the Emacs package helm-bibtex for > reference management since I have grown used to handling my references this > way. Lastly, my concern is git. I have struggled quite much to gain a > conceptual understanding of git (please see Figure 2.1 on page 10 in Kieran > Healy's guide). This have resulted in a quite messy git structure, but a > structure that at least works when I puch things and pull things through > using Magit. My fear is now that if I use your distribution I would have to > abort all those versions I have saved using git and Github and start all over > again. On the one hand I would like to do that, but on the other I am a bit > afraid of it since I have been struggling so much with when and how to pull > and push things and from where. I can see that you seem to have a preference > for Gitlab rather than Github. If I restructure my git system would it be a > good idea also to migrate everything to Gitlab? All this, just to explain why > I am doubting. I would be grateful if you could give me a bit of comfort here > and tell me that your distribution works well based on my requirements. As explained in the web page, my distribution is stock Emacs with a few addons. So you need not fear any incompatibility with normal Emacs packages. >> It's not a bug, it's a feature, and most likely one you'll come to >> appreciate in the long run. Actually, I'm pretty confident most ESS folks >> will agree that this is something RStudio got completely wrong: always >> launching R with the same working directory. >> >> Just imagine you need to work on two different projects simultaneously, each >> with its own R session. Emacs and ESS allow this and you set separate >> working directories right from the outset. Good luck doing this with RStudio. > > Thanks for explaining this! You just convinced my why the ESS solution is > better than the RStudio one. > >> Yes, Emacs does not import the shell environment on macOS. I take care of >> this in my distribution. > > So, another good reason to climb on your back then :) Certainly! > >> Take 5 minutes to setup a personal library for R packages. >> >> 1. Create a directory to host the library. In the sequel I'll use >> ~/Library/R/library. >> >> 2. Create a ~/.Renviron file with the following contents: >> >> R_LIBS_USER="~/Library/R/library/" >> R_INTERACTIVE_DEVICE=quartz >> >> 3. Restart R and check with '.libPaths()' that your personal library is now >> in first position. >> >> 4. Install R packages from R with 'install.packages()'. >> >> 5. Don't look behind. > > I suppose that I should be doing these thing right after I installed CRAN R, > right? What do you mean by "in first position" on point number three? .libPaths() returns a vector of paths (character strings) and your personal library should just be the first item in the vector. > Thanks once more for your support! I am truly, truly grateful to you. > > > Best regards, > Joakim Cheers, v. ______________________________________________ ESS-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/ess-help
