R 3.0.0 is released! (what's new, and how to upgrade)

A few hours ago Peter Dalgaard (of R Core Team) announced the release of R 3.0.0!  Bellow you can read the changes in this release.

One of the features worth noticing is the introduction of long vectors to R 3.0.0. As David Smith recently wrote:

Although many people won’t notice the difference, the introduction of long vectors to R is in fact a significant upgrade, and required a lot of work behind-the-scenes to implement in the core R engine. It will allow data frames to exceed their current 2 billion row limit, and in general allow R to make better use of memory in systems with large amounts of RAM. Many thanks go to the R core team for making this improvement.

You can get the source code from:  https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-3.0.0.tar.gz

or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you. Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course (which often means it will be within the next 2-48 hours).

If you are running R on Ubuntu, you may wish to consult this post.

If you are running R on Windows, you can use the following code to quickly download and install the latest R version using the installr package:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) {
install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr
install.R(to_checkMD5sums = FALSE) # the use of to_checkMD5sums is because of a slight bug in the MD5 file on R 3.0.0. Soon this should get resolved and you could go back to using updateR()

Either way, all users should note that this new release requires that packages will need to be re-installed, which means that after you install the new R, you should run the following command in it:

update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE)

(thank to Prof. Ripley for the above clarification, and the FAQ pointer)

R 3.0.0 NEWS:

SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES

Continue reading “R 3.0.0 is released! (what's new, and how to upgrade)”

Updating R (on Windows) through a menu-bar: installr 0.9 released on CRAN

In preparation for the upcoming release of R 3.0.0, a new release 0.9 of installr is now on CRAN.

The package can be installed and loaded using:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) {
install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

The new version includes various bug fixes (as can be seen in the NEWS file) and new functions and features. The most user visible feature is that from now on, whenever loading installr in the Rgui, it will add a new menu-bar for updating your R version (the menu is removed when the package is detached).

installr_menubar_updateR

When choosing to update R, a new GUI based system will guide you step by step through the updating process. It will first check if a newer version of R is available, if so, it will offer to show the latest NEWS of that release, download and install the new version, and copy/move your packages from the previous library folder, to the one in the new installation. If you have a global library folder, you can simply stop the updating once your new R is installed, and continue as you would otherwise (in the future, I intend to update the package to also allow it to deal with people using a global library folder).

installr_updateR_noupdate_needed

(for using {installr} to update R through R terminal, see my previous post: Updating R from R (on Windows) – using the {installr} package)

Another new feature is the “installr()” function (which can also be run through the menubar), running it will open a window with a list of software you can download and install using the installr package (From Rtools and RStudio to pandoc and MikTeX).

installr_installr_function

I hope you’ll enjoy this new release, and as always – please let me know in the comments (or via e-mail) if you come across any bugs or have suggestions for new features.