[R] Persistent storage between package invocations

[Martin Maechler]

    > It would be nice to have a standard directory where R can
    > write things this way.  A semi-standard directory is given
    > by Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER"), which defaults to ~/R/.../.
    > Maybe ~/R/ could serve as that convention?  That way we
    > (various developers etc) would also not clutter up users
    > home directory in "random" ways.

    > Personally I prefer a hidden directory, e.g. ~/.R/, but
    > there are pros and cons with such an approach.

{ this becomes more and more a topic for R-devel ...
  where the thread really should have been  started  (!) }

I agree that it would be nice...
*iff* it can be provided in a  platform-agnostic way.
I'm not enough of a Mac or Windows user to be in a position to
answer that with a view towards all the possibilities R is used.

WRT to ~/.R/ and ~/R/  I agree with your preference of using
~/.R/  as that has *already* been used for other configuration
settings, and it seems awkward to have both side by side.

Martin


    > /Henrik


    > On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Prof Brian Ripley
    > <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
    >> On Tue, 15 Mar 2011, Hadley Wickham wrote:
    >> 
    >>> Hi all,
    >>> 
    >>> Does anyone have any advice or experience storing
    >>> package settings between R runs?  Can I rely on the
    >>> user's home directory (e.g.
    >>> tools::file_path_as_absolute("~")) to be available and
    >>> writeable across platforms?
    >> 
    >> No.  First, please use path.expand("~") for this, and it
    >> does not necessarily mean the home directory (and in
    >> principle it might not expand at all).  In practice I
    >> think it will always be *a* home directory, but on
    >> Windows there may be more than one (and watch out for
    >> local/roaming profile differences).
    >> 
    >> Second, it need not be writeable, and so many package
    >> authors write rubbish in my home directory that I usually
    >> arrange it not be writeable to R test processes.
    >> 
    >> If you want something writeable across processes, use
    >> dirname(tempdir()) .
    >> 
    >>> 
>> Hadley
>>
>> --
>> Assistant Professor / Dobelman Family Junior Chair
>> Department of Statistics / Rice University
>> http://had.co.nz/
>>
>> ______________________________________________
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>
> --
> 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
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
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>

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