[R] installing package help with limited permissions

[Eva Goldwater]

Hello,

I administer a student (Windows based) computer lab, which has R 
installed.  I want to permit students to install R packages, but of 
course they don't have write permission to R root folder.  Following FAQ 
suggestion, I've set up a folder that they can write to, and set the 
R_LIB parameter on the shortcut to this folder.  So  far, so good - they 
can now install packages. However, I have not found any way to get the 
corresponding help files installed. 

FAQ says the help files require write permission to R installation 
folder.  This seems pretty extreme.  Is there some subfolder that would 
do the trick?  Any way to have an alternate place to store help files, 
just as we are using an alternate location for packages? 

I tried giving users Modify permission to R..../doc/html folder.  With 
this, install package does NOT give any error for insufficient 
permission to install help; help(package='package_name') works; however 
help(function, package='package_name') still does not work. 

Is there any good way out of this dilemma, short of giving users free 
permission to the entire R installation?  Thanks for any suggestions.

-- 
Eva Goldwater			email: goldwater at schoolph.umass.edu
Biostatistics Consulting	Phone: (413) 545-2949
418 Arnold House		Fax:   (413) 545-1645
715 North Pleasant Street
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-9304