Rinstallationnotes 2012

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R installation notes

Murtaza Haider August 01, 2010

Installing R and related Add-ins

You can learn about the R Project website: http://www.r-project.org/

To download R from the University of Toronto’s site, please click on http://probability.ca/cran/. R is available for Linux, Windows, and MacOS X.

To download the Windows version, please visit:

http://cran.stat.sfu.ca/ and click on base

and click onDownload R 2.9.0 for Windows (36 megabytes)

Save the file and then double-click it to install R.

The following dialogue will appear:

Select OK.

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Click Next on the following dialogue box:

Select the directory to install the software. For default location, click Next.

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Click Next on the following ensuring that you have selected (Yes customize startup):

Select SDI (Separate Windows) on the following dialogue box.

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Double click to run R.

R will launch and appear as follows:

Researchers around the world have contributed approximately 2000 packages for R. You can search for a package from the R website and download/install it directly from within R using:

Packages>install packages.

R will prompt you to select a mirror site to

download the packages. I often use the Ontario site.

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R with point-and-click GUI feature

Until recently, R was a command driven software. John Fox at McMaster University has added the GUI capabilities to R in a package. For details, please see:

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/

To install R Commander, please type the following at the red cursor in R:

>install.packages("Rcmdr", dependencies=TRUE)

This command will download R commander.

Once downloaded, load R Commander by typing the following at the red prompt:

>library(Rcmdr)

This will launch the Rcmdr, which is a GUI like environment shown on the next page.

Also, update packages by selecting

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To add additional functionality to R Cmdr, various packages in R have provided plugins for R Cmdr to offer the point and click functionality. Those plugins could be installed from within R as well.

Use Packages>Install Packages to select Rcmdr plug-ins.

Deducer By Ian Fellows

http://www.deducer.org

For Windows:

Deducer is much like any other package in R, and can be used from within the native R Gui or the Java R Gui JGR.

1. Make sure your R is updated to at least version 2.12.0 2. Download the JGR launcher from: JGR 64-bit JGR 32-bit 3. Open R and enter: install.packages(c("JGR","Deducer")) 4. Double click on the JGR launcher and enter: library(Deducer)

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For Mac:

1. Download and install R from CRAN

2. Download JGR from: JGR 64-bit, JGR 32-bit.

3. Open the native R GUI (it should be on the desktop) and at the prompt enter: install.packages(c("JGR","Deducer"))

4. Open JGR and enter: library(Deducer) to load Deducer

Other packages suggested

 AER  Hmisc  IsWR  mlogit  Zelig  Psych  R2HTML  Ecdat

 Estout and apsrtable

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How to UNinstall R?

Normally you can do this from the R group on the Start Menu or from the `Add/Remove Programs' or `Programs and Features' group in the Control Panel. If it does not appear there, run unins000.exe in the top-level installation directory. (There should be a separate uninstall item in the R group on the Start Menu for each installed version of R. On recent versions of Windows you may well be asked to confirm that you wish to run a program from an `unidentified publisher'.)

Uninstalling R only removes files from the initial installation, not (for example) packages you have installed or updated.

If all else fails, you can just delete the whole directory in which R was installed.

What's the best way to upgrade?

That's a matter of taste. For most people the best thing to do is to uninstall R (see the previous Q), install the new version, copy any installed packages to the library folder in the new installation, run update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE, ask=FALSE) in the new R and then delete anything left of the old installation. Different versions of R are quite deliberately installed in parallel folders so you can keep old versions around if you wish.

Rinstallationnotes 2012