R-statistics blog

Updating R from R (on Windows) – using the {installr} package

Tal Galili

Upgrading R on Windows is not easy. While the R FAQ offer guidelines, some users may prefer to simply run a command in order to upgrade their R to the latest version. That is what the new {installr} package is all about.

The {installr} package offers a set of R functions for the installation and updating of software (currently, only on Windows OS), with a special focus on R itself. To update R, you can simply run the following code:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) {
install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

# using the package:
updateR() # this will start the updating process of your R installation.  It will check for newer versions, and if one is available, will guide you through the decisions you'd need to make.

Running this function will perform the following steps:

If you know you wish to upgrade R, and you want the packages moved (not copied, MOVED), you can simply run:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

updateR(F, T, T, F, T, F, T) # install, move, update.package, quit R.

Since the various steps are broken into individual functions, you can also pick and choose what to run using the relevant function:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

# step by step functions:
check.for.updates.R() # tells you if there is a new version of R or not.
install.R() # download and run the latest R installer
copy.packages.between.libraries() # copy your packages to the newest R installation from the one version before it (if ask=T, it will ask you between which two versions to perform the copying)

If you like using the global library system, you can run the following in the old R:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

updateR(F, T, F, F, F, F, T) # only install R (if there is a newer version), and quits it.

And then run the following in the new version of R:

source("https://www.r-statistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/upgrading-R-on-windows.r.txt")
New.R.RunMe()

The {installr} package also offers functions for installing various other software on Windows. These functions include: install.pandoc (which was mentioned on this blog recently), install.git, install.Rtools, install.MikTeX, install.RStudio, and a general install.URL and install.packages.zip functions. You can see these further explained in the package’s Reference manual.

Feature requests, bug reports – and your help in improving the package

You can see the latest version of installr on github, where you can also submit bug reports (you may also just leave a comment in this post). Since this is my first R package, I might have (e.g: probably have) missed something here or there. So any comment on how to improve my code/documentation/R-fu, will be most welcomed (here or on github).

If this type of coding is fun/easy for you, you can help me improve this package on github. Cool new features I think may be added (by me or others) are:

Thanks

Final note, I would like to thank the many people who have developed WONDERFUL tools for making R package development possible (and even somewhat fast), on Windows. These include Prof. Brian Ripley and Duncan Murdoch for Rtools, also Uwe Ligges for his work on CRAN, Hadley Wickham for devtools (in general, and for its documentation), Yihui Xie for roxygen2, JJ and others in the RStudio team for RStudio, the people behind git and github, and more. There are probably more things I can thank these people for, and many more people I should thank, but I can’t figure who you are probably (feel free to e-mail me, I appreciate you work even if it is not clear to me your are behind it).

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