[R] Change in downloading packages

[Jim Lemon]

Hi,

I sent an earlier message concerning this, but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. 
Up until about a month ago, I downloaded packages by clicking on the filename 
of the package. Now this action leads me to a directory listing, e.g.:

drwxr-xr-x hornik/users      0 2002-03-20 18:00:54 npmc/
-rw-r--r-- hornik/users    314 2002-03-20 11:33:42 npmc/DESCRIPTION
-rw-r--r-- hornik/users    202 2002-03-20 11:49:40 npmc/INDEX
-rwxr--r-- hornik/users     99 2002-03-20 12:18:34 npmc/build
drwxr-xr-x hornik/users      0 2002-03-20 12:18:15 npmc/man/
...

from which I cannot download anything. It now appears necessary to FTP to:

cran.r-project.org

(or a suitable mirror) change to the:

pub/R/src/contrib

directory and download the package. While I appreciate the functionality of 
install.packages(), one has to be connected to the Internet to use it, and I 
have one old laptop that I use for remote work that has no such connection. 
Downloading the source package is much more convenient than rebuilding a 
package myself from the source code to upgrade this PC. I think that this 
change should at least be announced with a suggestion for a suitable 
workaround for those who need the actual source package.

R-1.8.0 on
RedHat Linux 7.2

Jim

Feel free to ignore any garbage beneath this line.

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