[R] Is R portable?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2007, John Kane wrote:

> I simply installed R onto a USB stick, downloaded my
> normal packages to it and it works fine under Windows.

Yes, on Windows, but

1) There are other OSes,

2) This didn't just happen: it needed some careful design, including some 
caching to make it run fast from a USB disk.


Unix-alike ports of R are not completely portable, as the path to R_HOME 
is encapsulated in the R and Rscript front ends.  So if on, say, Linux you 
want to plug in a USB disc then it will only work if you installed R to 
that USB disk mounted at the same location in the file system, or are 
prepared to edit the copies of the R script (which had therefore better be 
mounted read-write).

The standard MacOS build has standard paths encapsulated in many places.

>
>
> --- Roland Rau <roland.rproject at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Tom,
>>
>> did you check the R for Windows FAQ?
>>
> http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/rw-FAQ.html#Can-I-run-R-from-a-CD-or-USB-drive_003f
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Roland
>>
>>
>> Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
>>> Recently I came across an interesting web site:
>>> http://portableapps.com/.  The idea is simple,
>> this is software that
>>> is possible to install and run on some type of USB
>> memory, a stick or
>>> one of these hard disks.  I can think of a number
>> of situations where
>>> this could be handy.  In addition memory sticks
>> are getting cheaper
>>> and more powerful by the day.
>>>
>>> So:  Is it possible to run R off one of these
>> sticks?
>>>
>>> I am also informed that it is possible to run
>> Latex in this manner.
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
>> reproducible code.
>>>
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained,
>> reproducible code.
>>
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595