Yihui Xie-2 wrote: > > Hi, > > I guess this issue must have been brought forward long time ago, but I > still hope you can consider under Windows (during installation): > > 1. put R's bin path in the PATH variable of the system so that we can > use the commands "R" and "Rscript" more easily; >
On one hand it certainly would be nice to have this as an option similar to what the RTools installer does. For the 32/64 bit decision, perhaps RHOME/bin could be placed on the PATH and bin/R.exe turned into a bin/R.bat that calls bin/i386/R.exe, bin/x64/R.exe depending on the Windows architecture. On the other hand, the grizzled developer in me is saying "this is a teaching moment. If someone is using a programming language they should know what an environment variable is and how to set it". Admittingly, setting environment variables is a PITA on Windows compared to UNIX. Here's a great freeware tool I have found that makes it so much easier: http://www.rapidee.com Another issue is that many Windows machines are locked down in such a way that environment variables cannot be set permanently. To deal with this, I carry a USB stick that has R installed on it and a batch script that `setx`es environment variables for me. Combined with an `autorun.inf` script, this basically lets me plug my USB stick into a Windows machine and get to work without worrying about how careful the sysadmin was when they set up the tools I like to use (or if they even bothered to include the tools I like to use). A good video tutorial for setting up autorun.inf from Tinkernut.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFlgddjOPpw Some of the things in that video are outdated and the overall goal is to show how they could be used for nefarious purposes, but the part about converting a `.bat` script to a `.exe` binary and setting up an autorun.inf to execute the result is solid. Combine with MikTeX Portable and you should be able to Sweave from anywhere. Yihui Xie-2 wrote: > > 2. remove the version string like R-2.13.0 in the default installation > directory, e.g. only use a directory like C:/Program Files/R/ instead > of C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/; I know many people just follow the > default setting when installing R, and this version string will often > lead to many (unnecessary) copies of R in the system and brings > difficulty to the first issue (several possible bin directories); > > I'm aware of some existing efforts in overcoming the difficulty of > calling R under Windows like the R batch files project > (http://code.google.com/p/batchfiles/), but I believe this is better > to be solved in R directly. > As a package developer I rather like this---I can have multiple versions of R installed and easily set up my testsuite such that it loops through each one and executes the tests. -Charlie ----- Charlie Sharpsteen Undergraduate-- Environmental Resources Engineering Humboldt State University -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Wishlist-write-R-s-bin-path-to-the-PATH-variable-and-remove-the-version-string-in-the-installation-ds-tp3493922p3496533.html Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
