Well, it seems I still have not make myself clear enough: I myself do not have any questions here -- I know all the solutions, and I just do not want to (1) explain to people again and again what is the PATH variable under Windows (2) have to think where is R when I want to run R as a command.
So you all believe Windows people had better double click the shortcut on the desktop and work from that RGui? e.g. use Sweave() instead of R CMD Sweave? Regards, Yihui -- Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name Department of Statistics, Iowa State University 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:41 PM, Simon Urbanek <simon.urba...@r-project.org> wrote: > > On May 3, 2011, at 11:25 PM, Yihui Xie wrote: > >> 1. "Few Windows users use these commands" does not imply they are not >> useful, and I have no idea how many Windows users really use them. How >> do you run "R CMD build" when you build R packages under Windows? You >> don't write "C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/bin/i386/R.exe CMD build", do >> you? >> > > Yes, of course. It's the safest way and really easy if you use a decent > manager (I hope you're not typing your packages tar ball names by hand, > either). Adding things to PATH on Windows (unlike unix) has the unwanted > consequence that all hell breaks loose due to PATH overriding DLL locations > so you really don't want to mess with it. > > >> I think the reason we have to mess with the PATH variable for each >> single software package is that Windows is Not Unix, so you may hate >> Windows instead of a package that modifies your PATH variable. >> >> For the choice of i386 and x64, you can let the user decide which bin >> path to use. I believe the number of users who frequently switch back >> and forth is fairly small. >> >> 2. Under most circumstances I just keep the latest version of R. To >> maintain R code with old R versions will be more and more difficult >> with new features and changes coming in. Disk space is cheap, but time >> is not. >> >> I'm talking about the default installation directory here and I'm only >> wishing that the version string could be removed by default. >> > > It can be already now, so I really have no idea what you're complaining > about. If that's what you want, drop the the version and keep the one > unversioned directory in your PATH and Bob's your uncle. > > Cheers, > Simon > > > >> Anyway, I think I will go to the batch files approach if these >> suggestions are going to be turned down. I just don't want to tell >> other people to run Rscript.bat under Windows and Rscript under *nix. >> I hope they can be consistent. >> >> Regards, >> Yihui >> -- >> Yihui Xie <xieyi...@gmail.com> >> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name >> Department of Statistics, Iowa State University >> 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA >> >> >> >> On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> On 03/05/2011 7:44 PM, Yihui Xie wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> I guess this issue must have been brought forward long time ago, but I >>>> still hope you can consider under Windows (during installation): >>>> >>>> 1. put R's bin path in the PATH variable of the system so that we can >>>> use the commands "R" and "Rscript" more easily; >>> >>> Few Windows users use those commands. The ones who do are generally exactly >>> the ones who know how to edit the PATH variable themselves. >>> >>> For most users (the ones who start R from the shortcut), there's no need to >>> mess with the PATH variable. Personally, I hate programs that do that. And >>> with R, it's now complicated, because there are 2 different directories >>> holding executables: bin/i386 and bin/x64. (The bin directory also holds >>> some, but that's just for back compatibility.) >>> How could the installer know which of those to put in the PATH? At >>> installation time, a user isn't going to know which one he/she needs. >>> >>>> 2. remove the version string like R-2.13.0 in the default installation >>>> directory, e.g. only use a directory like C:/Program Files/R/ instead >>>> of C:/Program Files/R/R-2.13.0/; I know many people just follow the >>>> default setting when installing R, and this version string will often >>>> lead to many (unnecessary) copies of R in the system and brings >>>> difficulty to the first issue (several possible bin directories); >>> >>> Multiple installs give you the possibility of reproducing things that don't >>> work in the latest R version. I think it's a good practice to keep multiple >>> installs on your system if you have the space, and since disk space is cheap >>> these days, that's not so uncommon. >>> >>> Duncan Murdoch >>> >>>> >>>> I'm aware of some existing efforts in overcoming the difficulty of >>>> calling R under Windows like the R batch files project >>>> (http://code.google.com/p/batchfiles/), but I believe this is better >>>> to be solved in R directly. >>>> >>>> Thanks! >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Yihui >>>> -- >>>> Yihui Xie<xieyi...@gmail.com> >>>> Phone: 515-294-2465 Web: http://yihui.name >>>> Department of Statistics, Iowa State University >>>> 2215 Snedecor Hall, Ames, IA >>>> >>>> ______________________________________________ >>>> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >>>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >>> >>> >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-devel@r-project.org mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel >> >> > > ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
