>>>>> Wincent <ronggui.hu...@gmail.com>
>>>>> on Wed, 4 May 2011 13:46:13 +0800 writes:
> I also prefer to keep the old versions. Sometimes, I have
> spent time to set up the system with older version and
> don't want to update to the latest (e.g. the new RGtk2
> needs updated GTk2 as well) because the older still works
> and I don't need the new features.
Well.... Thomas gave good reasons to keep old versions of R
*IN ADDITION* to the latest R version.
Exactly *because* that is so easy, it makes very much sense to
update to the newest version:
Use the latest R, and if you really have doubts, quickly run the
same R code in the older R version that is still available.
Note to Yihui Xie: I agree 100% with the other R core members
(Duncan, Simon, Thomas) who already explained why it is *GOOD*
to install R in version-named directories by default.
BTW: If you use ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) on Windows,
it now automatically(*) finds all versions of R
(* well, less generally, probably than Gabor's batch files; IIRC,
we assume that the R versions were installed in the default place),
and provides them, both the 32bit and 64bit versions, in the ESS
menu, or via
M-x R- [Tab completion]
Very nice, very useful in my eyes.
Martin
> Regards Ronggui
> On 4 May 2011 13:26, Thomas Lumley <tlum...@uw.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Yihui Xie
>> <x...@yihui.name> wrote:
>>> 1. "Few Windows users use these commands" does not imply
>>> they are not useful, and I have no idea how many Windows
>>> users really use them. How do you run "R CMD build" when
>>> you build R packages under Windows? You don't write
>>> "C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/bin/i386/R.exe CMD build",
>>> do you?
>>>
>>> I think the reason we have to mess with the PATH
>>> variable for each single software package is that
>>> Windows is Not Unix, so you may hate Windows instead of
>>> a package that modifies your PATH variable.
>>>
>>> For the choice of i386 and x64, you can let the user
>>> decide which bin path to use. I believe the number of
>>> users who frequently switch back and forth is fairly
>>> small.
>>>
>>> 2. Under most circumstances I just keep the latest
>>> version of R. To maintain R code with old R versions
>>> will be more and more difficult with new features and
>>> changes coming in. Disk space is cheap, but time is not.
>>>
>>
> I keep old versions for basically the same reasons you don't
>> -- that is, I have analyses that ran under the old
>> versions, and I can be sure they will give the same
>> answer a year later if I keep the old versions. This
>> isn't so much because of changes in R as because of
>> changes in packages.
>>
>> -thomas
>>
>> --
>> Thomas Lumley Professor of Biostatistics University of
>> Auckland
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
--
Wincent Ronggui HUANG
> Sociology Department of Fudan University PhD of City
> University of Hong Kong
> http://asrr.r-forge.r-project.org/rghuang.html
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
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