R repository

I have created a repository for my R packages as described in the section 6.6 of R Installation and Administration manual. You can install or download any of my packages directly from R and, moreover, have them automatically updated.

It contains source and Windows binary distributions. Windows versions may not be up to date as I have a limited possibilities to build Windows binary versions right now.

The repository can now be browsed, just go to http://bojan.3e.pl/R. The directory structure follows CRAN standard.

Sources of the packages in their current versions can be found in the src/contrib directory. Older version are in the src/contrib/Archive.

Windows binaries are in subdirectories of bin/windows/contrib. The subdirectories correspond to the R versions.

There is also hacks subdirectory which contains modified versions of some of the packages written by others.

With a repository like mine you can download and/or install packages directly from R. You can either download a source or binary distribution without installation or directly install a package.

To download a package without installation you use the download.packages function:

# to download the sources only
download.packages("bojan", destdir="c:/R",
    repos="http://bojan.3e.pl/R", type="source")
 
# to download the binary version for windows
download.packages("bojan", destdir="c:/R",
    repos="http://bojan.3e.pl/R", type="win.binary")

The argument destdir is the location where the file will be saved.

To install any of my packages directly you use a install.packages function with appropriate arguments pointing to my repository. For example to install package bojan you need to type:

install.packages( "bojan", repos="http://bojan.3e.pl/R")

Package bojan will be downloaded and installed to the default library tree. The default location is the one on the first position in the vector returned by .LibPaths(). If there are no additional library trees defined the default location is $RHOME/library. You may change it with lib argument.

Another feature of using the repository is the possibility for automatic updating. With small addition to your personal configuration file R will automatically check my server for newer versions of any of my packages you have installed.

We need to create a user copy of Rprofile file in your user directory. Under Windows system user directory probably is defined as c:\documents and settings\userName\my documents. If you are not sure open R and type Sys.getenv(“R_USER”). This will return the appropriate path.

If there is no copy of Rprofile in your user directory yet create it by copying the Rprofile file from $RHOME/etc.

Now edit this file and add the following lines:

local({
    r <- getOption("repos")
    r["bojan"] <- "http://bojan.3e.pl/R"
    options(repos=r)
}) 

This basically adds my repository to the list of places in which R looks for packages if instructed to install or update a package.

Now if, on Windows, you go to menu “Packages | Install package(s)…” the list will include my packages as well. Also, if you use update.packages then R will also look on my server for newer versions.