[Rd] testing a Windows custom installer

[Brian G. Peterson]

On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 10:29 -0400, John Fox wrote:
> For several years, I've created a custom R installer for my students
> who use Windows. When I test the installer on my own Windows machines,
> selections in the installation dialogs reflect my previous choices,
> which I suppose are saved in the Windows registry. 
> 
> I'd like to be able to see what a student who has never installed R
> before will see, to verify that an installation that takes all
> defaults in the custom installer produces the desired result. In the
> past, I've dealt with this problem by finding a Windows machine on
> which R has never been installed, but that's inconvenient (and, as R
> proliferates will, I hope, become impossible!). Is there a better
> approach? 

I keep a Windows XP virtual machine image around in a 'clean' state for
things like this.  I spin up the 'clean' image, test what I need to
test, and shut down the Windows image without snapshotting it.

Regards,

  - Brian

-- 
Brian G. Peterson
http://braverock.com/brian/
Ph: 773-459-4973
IM: bgpbraverock