Just to add to that point - it is expected that the registry is appropriately updated so the correct version of R can be located. Just unpacking a ZIP won't work in general since tools using R have no reliable way to find it.
Cheers, Simon > On Jun 6, 2019, at 6:33 AM, Jeroen Ooms <jer...@berkeley.edu> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 5:40 PM Steven Penny <svnp...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Theres nothing nefarious here. It would allow people to use the R environment >> without running an installer. If someone is a new user they may want to try >> R out, and installers can be invasive as they commonly: >> >> - copy files to install dir >> - copy files to profile dir >> - set registry entries >> - set environment variables >> - set start menu entries >> >> and historically uninstallers have a bad record of reverting these changes. >> should not put this burden upon new users or even having them resort to >> virtual >> machine to avoid items above. having a ZIP file allows new users to run the >> R environment, then if they like it perhaps they can run the installer going >> forward. > > This is a valid suggestion, but probably impossible to do reliably. > Most installers (the R one is completely open source btw) perform > those steps for a reason. It is great if software can be installed > simply by extracting a zip file somewhere, but if this is what you > desire, you're using the wrong operating system. > > We only offer official installation options that work 100% reliably > and I don't think this can be accomplished with a zip file. For > example a zip file won't be able to set the installation location in > the registry, and hence other software such as RStudio won't be able > to find the R installation. Also a zip installation might mix up > package libraries from different R versions (which is bad), or users > might expect they can upgrade R by overwriting their installation with > a new zip (also bad). Hence I'm afraid offering such alternative > installation options would open a new can of worms with bug reports > from Windows users with broken installations, or packages that don't > work as expected. > > As for alternatives, 'rportable' and 'innoextract' have already been > mentioned if you really just want to dump the files from the > installer, if that works for you. Another popular option to install > (any) Windows software without manually running installers is using > chocolatey, for example: > > choco install miktex > choco install r.project > > This will still indirectly use official installers, but the installers > have been verified as "safe" by external folks and the installation is > completely automated. Perhaps that's another compromise you could live > with. > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel