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swcarpentry / windows-installer

Software Carpentry installer for Windows.
MIT License
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Issues with R paths #44

Closed ethanwhite closed 8 years ago

ethanwhite commented 8 years ago

At a workshop I just ran we ran into issues with R not being in the path on a number of Windows computers. In the past this has been caused because R likes to change the path where it installs itself and we've needed to change the function that searches for R. The new path that is causing issues is:

C:\Program Files\R\R-3.2.4revised\bin

embray commented 8 years ago

Fantastic. Does R not install its path in %PATH% when you install it?

evanwill commented 8 years ago

If we already have people installing Python via Anaconda, we could add R via conda which might simplify things. https://www.continuum.io/blog/developer/jupyter-and-conda-r

embray commented 8 years ago

Does the R package for conda include R Studio? How much do the R workshops rely on R Studio, or do they use Jupyter more?

evanwill commented 8 years ago

No, Conda does not have RStudio. I just tested it this morning on a windows machine and realized its not so easy. The conda r-essentials works great for Jupyter notebook, and is available on the command line, but I can't get RStudio to run correctly with it. I think it maybe a permissions issue? Anaconda is installed for a user, not admin, so the conda R version is in /Users/exampleuser/AppData/Local/Continuum/Anaconda3/. By default RStudio only looks for R installed via a windows installer. I can manually set RStudio use the conda version by giving it the full path, but it doesn't seem to actually work. So unless someone figures out how to make it work with RStudio, I guess its not helpful. However, using conda r-essentials is the easiest way to make R available to Jupyter notebook.

fmichonneau commented 8 years ago

The naming scheme for "R-3.2.4-revised" was an exception and R maintainers (relatively) quickly realized that it wasn't a good idea to come up with a naming scheme that was never used before. They soon after released 3.2.5 and probably won't use this naming scheme ever again (see the 3.2.5 release notes https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-announce/2016/000601.html). They even removed 3.2.4-revised from the list of previous releases.

embray commented 8 years ago

Fixed by #46. Going to try to build a new version of the installer ASAP.