Hello, The discussion about version names leads me to the following question (sorry, I change the message title): Is it possible to enforce the user to select an option during R installation? For instance, I want R to be installed with the registry entry option set up and, let's say, with tcltk files installed. How do I ensure this?
Well, under Windows, Inno Setup that is used as the installer is plenty of resources for that! You have lots of command line arguments, including /SAVEINF and LOADINF/ that use a custom information file about the options. Then, you can run the setup silently with /SP-, /SILENT or /VERYSILENT from the command line, thus, from a batch script. Ultimately, it is possible to write an installer that will install R with several options, with additional packages, etc... very easily without having to rebuid the original R installer. You need both the rwXXXX.exe installer (about 23Mb), and your custom installer (let's say with a couple of additional packages, weighting a few hundreds of kb) downloaded in the same directory. You run your custom installer, which in turn installs R silently with the right options (it even can detect if R is already installed or not). There is a real interest for this approach for projects like R Commander, or SciViews-R. Indeed, it targets beginners and installation should be as straigthforward as possible. Currently, you have to (1) install R (2) with specific options, (3) install additional packages, and (4) switch Rgui in SDI mode under Windows... before you can start working in R Commander or SciViews-R. Definitely too many tasks for a beginner! So, I will experiment a little bit with Inno Setup in this direction and intend to propose a web page about this topic, for Windows. Now, my two questions: 1) Does anyone has some experience using Inno Setup this way? 2) How to solve the problem of custom installation this way under Linux/Unix? [with a batch script, I presume, but does somebody have a skeleton for that: installing R with specific options + several additional packages at once]. Thanks, Philippe Grosjean ..............................................<°}))><........ ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( Prof. Philippe Grosjean ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( Numerical Ecology of Aquatic Systems ) ) ) ) ) Mons-Hainaut University, Pentagone ( ( ( ( ( Academie Universitaire Wallonie-Bruxelles ) ) ) ) ) 6, av du Champ de Mars, 7000 Mons, Belgium ( ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) ) phone: + 32.65.37.34.97, fax: + 32.65.37.33.12 ( ( ( ( ( email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ) ) ) ) ) ( ( ( ( ( web: http://www.umh.ac.be/~econum ) ) ) ) ) .............................................................. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gabor > Grothendieck > Sent: Monday, November 29, 2004 3:12 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Rd] Version names > > Gabor Grothendieck <ggrothendieck <at> myway.com> writes: > > > > > Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek <at> math.uni-augsburg.de> writes: > > > > > : If all you want to do is to determine the current (most recently > > : installed) R version, then all it takes is two lines of C > code [just > > : read one registry entry] - and it's at least as portable across > > Windows > > : systems as a batch script, but far more flexible. (There > may even be > > a > > : way to get that info w/o coding at all - I'm not sure whether > > regedit > > : has any batch mode or something ...). > > > > I don't think regedit has a batch mode. e.g. regedit /? > does not give help. > > I looked into a bit more and some of this information is > actually in the FAQ: > > > 2.15 Does R use the Registry? > Not itself. > > The installers set some entries to allow uninstallation. In > addition (by default, but this can be de-selected) they set > a Registry key LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\R-core\R giving the > version and install path. Again, this is not used by R > itself, but it will be used by the DCOM interface > (http://cran.r-project.org/other-software.html). Finally, a > file association for extension .RData is set in the > Registry. > > You can add the Registry entries by running RSetReg.exe in > the bin folder, and remove them by running this with > argument /U. Note that the settings are all per machine and > not per user, and that this neither sets up nor removes the > file associations. > > Also it seems that one uses reg.exe rather than regedit.exe from > batch files so putting all this together we get the following > Windows XP batch statement to get the current path to the > rw.... folder. > It puts the path into the Rrw variable: > > for /f "tokens=2*" %%a in ( > 'reg query hklm\software\r-core\r /v InstallPath') do > set Rrw=%%b > > The bad news is that this is not 100% guaranteed to work > since, as mentioned > above, the user can deselect modification of the registry > during installation > but its certainly more than sufficient for my purposes and > probably most > other purposes too. > > Thanks for pointing the way. > > ______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
