[R] Windows Installation Without Third-Party Packages

[Jeff Newmiller]

John's answer is correct but you might like one of the following summaries better.

The short (baby bear) answer is no. A longer (papa bear) answer is that anything is possible if you dig deep enough. But the just-right (mama bear) answer is that you don't need to worry about it since users should normally be updating their personal libraries which will take precedence over the system-wide library.
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Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On April 9, 2015 11:13:45 AM PDT, John McKown <john.archie.mckown at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 8:42 AM, Elliot Joel Bernstein
><ejb6 at cornell.edu>
>wrote:
>
>> I am trying to install R for Windows, but when I use the installer
>provided
>> on CRAN, a number of third-party packages are installed by default
>(i.e.
>> lattice, Matrix, codetools, etc.). If R is installed with
>administrator
>> privileges, so it's available for all users, non-administrators can't
>> update those packages. Is there any way to just install R without any
>> third-party packages, and let individual users install the packages
>they
>> want?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> - Elliot
>>
>>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>
>​Please try to not post in HTML, per forum standards.
>
>I don't know if this will help, but I hope so. I think what I did will
>be
>self explanatory
>
>> install.packages('plyr',lib=.libPaths()[1])
>trying URL
>'http://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/3.1/plyr_1.8.1.zip'
>Content type 'application/zip' length 1154715 bytes (1.1 Mb)
>opened URL
>downloaded 1.1 Mb
>
>package ‘plyr’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
>
>The downloaded binary packages are in
>C:\Users\john.mckown\AppData\Local\Temp\RtmpWIjtdm\downloaded_packages
>> .libPaths()
>[1] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1"
>[2] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library"
>> .libPaths()
>[1] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1"
>[2] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library"
>> list.dirs(.libPaths()[1])
>  [1] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1"
>
>...
>[116] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr"
>
>[117] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/data"
>
>[118] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/help"
>
>[119] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/html"
>
>[120] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/libs"
>
>[121] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/libs/i386"
>
>[122] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/libs/x64"
>
>[123] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/Meta"
>
>[124] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/R"
>
>[125] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/plyr/tests"
>
>[126] "C:/Users/john.mckown/Documents/R/win-library/3.1/R6"
>
>...
>
>As you can see, "plyr" got installed in my personal area. And it is
>still
>on the system directory:
>
>> list.dirs(.libPaths()[2])[seq(from=1050,to=1061)]
> [1] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/parallel/tests"
> [2] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr"
> [3] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/data"
> [4] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/help"
> [5] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/html"
> [6] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/libs"
> [7] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/libs/i386"
> [8] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/libs/x64"
> [9] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/Meta"
>[10] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/R"
>[11] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/plyr/tests"
>[12] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.1.1/library/proto"
>>
>
>Pardon the weird subscript, but the list was way to big to cut, paste,
>and
>edit. So your users should be able to force any package, even a
>"system"
>package, into their personal R directory using the "lib=" parameter of
>the
>install.packages() function. This will allow them to update their copy
>of
>any R package from CRAN.
>
>I hope.​
>
>
>-- 
>If you sent twitter messages while exploring, are you on a
>textpedition?
>
>He's about as useful as a wax frying pan.
>
>10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone
>
>Maranatha! <><
>John McKown
>
>	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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