[R] packages on R on a Mac

[Thomas Lumley]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Roger Coupal wrote:

> Hello, i am new to R and have it on my Mac with OSX 10.2. I downloaded
> the systemfit package and tried to run it and it didn't work. I think i
> need to install the package, or update R to let it know that I have
> that in the library. (i simply placed the systemfit folder in the R
> library.) When i run update.packages(systemfit) or
> install.packages(systemfit) i get the following error:
>
> Error: couldn't find function "install.packages"

You don't say whether you are using the Carbon GUI version or the Darwin
version, but if install.packages() doesn't exist then I assume the former.

The Carbon version needs precompiled binary packages (In principle you
could compile them yourself, but that is not straightforward for this
version).  The precompiled binary packages live at
http://cran.r-project.org/bin/macos/contrib/

As systemfit has no compiled code then I believe a binary package created
on any system will work, so you could get a Windows zip file and unzip in
in the library directory.  Note that I have only tried this with a package
created under Darwin.

This system is clearly unsatisfactory, and that's why our Mac guru,
Stefano Iacus, is now working on a GUI for the Darwin version rather than
compiling packages.  In the current development version of RAqua
install.packages() works very nicely.


	-thomas

Thomas Lumley			Assoc. Professor, Biostatistics
tlumley at u.washington.edu	University of Washington, Seattle