INSTALL                package:utils                R Documentation

Install Add-on Packages

Description:

     Utility for installing add-on packages.

Usage:

     R CMD INSTALL [options] [-l lib] pkgs

Arguments:

    pkgs: A space-separated list with the path names of the packages to
          be installed.

     lib: the path name of the R library tree to install to.

 options: a space-separated list of options through which in particular
          the process for building the help files can be controlled. 
          Options should only be given once. Use 'R CMD INSTALL --help'
          for the current list of options. 

Details:

     This will stop at the first error, so if you want all the 'pkgs'
     to be tried, call this via a shell 'for' or 'foreach' loop.

     If used as 'R CMD INSTALL pkgs' without explicitly specifying
     'lib', packages are installed into the library tree rooted at the
     first directory in the library path which would be used by R run
     in the current environment.

     To install into the library tree 'lib', use 'R CMD INSTALL -l lib
     pkgs'.  This prepends 'lib' to 'R_LIBS' for duration of the
     install, so required packages in the installation directory will
     be found (and used in preference to those in other libraries).

     Both 'lib' and the elements of 'pkgs' may be absolute or relative
     path names of directories.  'pkgs' may also contain names of
     package/bundle archive files of the form 'pkg_version.tar.gz' as
     obtained from CRAN: these are then extracted in a temporary
     directory.  Finally, binary package/bundle archive files (as
     created by 'R CMD build --binary' can be supplied.

     Some package sources contain a 'configure' script that can be
     passed arguments or variables via the option '--configure-args'
     and '--configure-vars', respectively, if necessary.  The latter is
     useful in particular if libraries or header files needed for the
     package are in non-system directories.  In this case, one can use
     the configure variables 'LIBS' and 'CPPFLAGS' to specify these
     locations (and set these via '--configure-vars'), see section
     "Configuration variables" in "R Installation and Administration"
     for more information.  (If these are used more than once on the
     command line, only the last instance is used.)  One can bypass the
     configure mechanism using the option '--no-configure'.

     If '--no-docs' is given, no help files are built.  Options
     '--no-text', '--no-html', and '--no-latex' suppress creating the
     text, HTML, and LaTeX versions, respectively.  The default is to
     build help files in all three versions.

     If the attempt to install the package fails, leftovers are
     removed. If the package was already installed, the old version is
     restored. This happens either if a command encounters an error or
     if the install is interrupted from the keyboard: after cleaning up
     the script terminates.

     Use 'R CMD INSTALL --help' for more usage information.

Packages using the methods package:

     Packages that require the methods package and make use functions
     such as 'setMethod' or 'setClass', should be installed using
     lazy-loading (or, deprecated, by creating a binary image): use the
     field 'LazyLoad' in the 'DESCRIPTION' file to ensure this.

Note:

     Some parts of the operation of 'INSTALL' depend on '/tmp' having
     both write and execution access to the account running R. This is
     usually the case, but if  '/tmp' has been mounted as 'noexec',
     environment variable 'TMPDIR' needs to be set to a directory from
     which execution is allowed.

See Also:

     'REMOVE' and 'library' for information on using several library
     trees; 'update.packages' for automatic update of packages using
     the internet (or other R level installation of packages, such as
     by 'install.packages').

     The section on "Add-on packages" in "R Installation and
     Administration" and the chapter on "Creating R packages" in
     "Writing R Extensions" (see 'RShowDoc' and the 'doc/manual'
     subdirectory of the R source tree).

