Installing or Updating R

Install R

The R website is … special. Since you probably don’t know or care what a mirror is, here are links to the

  • Go to the R Project website
  • Choose the Download and install R your operation system:
    • Mac: Download R-3.2.4.pkg
    • Windows: First click on base and then on Download R 3.2.4 for Windows

Upgrade R

If you already have R installed, to check that you have the newest version of R, run

sessionInfo()

which will produce output like,

R version 3.2.4 (2016-03-10)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0 (64-bit)
Running under: OS X 10.11.3 (El Capitan)

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] R6_2.1.2

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] rsconnect_0.4.2 tools_3.2.4     knitr_1.12.3

At the start of this course, March 29, 2016, the newest version of R is 3.2.4. Check that your R version is that one.

Update packages

Now, update all your packages

update.packages(ask = FALSE)

The option ask = FALSE answers “yes to all the questions” as to whether to answer

Installing or Upgrading R RStudio

If you don’t have RStudio installed, install it from rstudio.com. You want to download the RStudio Desktop Open Source Edition (which is FREE).

If you already have RStudio installed, go to Help > Check for Updates in the menu and install a new version if the pop-up window indicates that there is a new version available.

Installing Tools to Build R Packages from Scratch

Mature R packages are distributed over CRAN and installable in R using install.packages without any other assistance. However, we may use some bleeding-edge R packages that require the packages to be built from source and installed using the devtools package. Install or

This requires some extra programs.

  • Windows: Install the newest version of Rtools. Use default settings.
  • Mac: Install Xcode from the Mac App Store.

To check that this is setup correctly, run the following

library("devtools")
has_devel()

If everything is correctly set up, it will return TRUE. If you do not have Rtools or Xcode installed you will get an error message similar to this:

> has_devel()
"C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-32~1.4RE/bin/x64/R"  \
  --no-site-file --no-environ --no-save  \
  --no-restore CMD SHLIB foo.c

Warning message:
running command 'make -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-32~1.4RE/etc/x64/Makeconf" -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-32~1.4RE/share/make/winshlib.mk" SHLIB="foo.dll" WIN=64 TCLBIN=64 OBJECTS="foo.o"' had status 127
Error: Command failed (1)

Installing LaTeX

LaTeX is needed to create PDFs from R Markdown files. Install the following, depending on your operating system:

  • Windows: MikTex

    • When asked choose default paper size of “letter” instead of “A4”

  • OSX: MacTex

Note, these are very large files.