On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Ted Byers <r.ted.by...@gmail.com> wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: r-devel-boun...@r-project.org [mailto:r-devel-bounces@r- >> project.org] On Behalf Of Gabor Grothendieck >> Sent: May-04-11 10:35 AM >> To: Duncan Murdoch >> Cc: R-devel >> Subject: Re: [Rd] Wishlist: write R's bin path to the PATH variable and > remove >> the version string in the installation dir under Windows >> >> [snip] >> I personally keep about half a dozen back versions of R for the reasons >> others have mentioned and these would include one R-13.x version, one R- >> 12.x version, etc. I literally use x in the name since only the most > recent >> version in any such series is stored. That is, when a new R-2.13.x comes > out I >> just install it over the existing >> R-2.13.x: >> >> Directory of C:\Program Files\R >> >> 31/03/2010 02:37 PM <DIR> R-2.10.x >> 01/06/2010 01:03 PM <DIR> R-2.11.x >> 22/03/2011 03:25 PM <DIR> R-2.12.x >> 26/04/2011 01:45 PM <DIR> R-2.13.x >> >> > Do you keep the RTools version specific to each version of R installed too? > If so, how do you manage that so that each version of R finds the right > version of RTools when it needs it? > > I don't use RTools much, but I need it to install some fo the packages I use > from source since there are no binary distributions for them (for 64 bit > Windows). I don't typically keep any more than two versions of R on my > machine at any one time, but I don't remove an older version until I have > verified that my R scripts work fine in the latest release. So usually > there is only one version on my machine, but there will be two for a short > while after a new release. But, my normal practice, as I describe here, > would be disrupted if R's installer wrote R's bin path to my system path (in > fact, I hate that for any software I use, even though in some cases there's > no way to avoid it). > > Thanks > > Ted > >
Typically I do my development on the latest version of R so I only need one version of Rtools. The older versions of R are just for checking older software. There is a program RtoolsVersion.bat in the batchfiles that will tell you which version of Rtools you have (which it finds by first looking in the registry and if not found there looks for an R_TOOLS environment variable and if still not found looks for C:\Rtools): C:\tmp2>RtoolsVersion RtoolsVersion.bat: Rtools found at: c:\Rtools Rtools version 2.13.0.1901 (There is also Rtools.bat that will temporarily add Rtools to your path (although if you use Rcmd.bat, R.bat, etc. then they can find Rtools without it being on the path so mostly one does not need to use Rtools.bat). If people wanted to have multiple versions of Rtools, Rtools would ideally have a tool similar to R's own RSetReg.exe . Another possibility would be to turn Rtools into an R package so that R's library mechanism handled the versioning. Regarding permanently putting R on the path, I agree that it would be annoying having R permanently there and for that reason the batchfiles do not do that. -- Statistics & Software Consulting GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc. tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel