[ESS] Finding Rterm in R 2.12.0 on Windows

[Stephen Eglen]

> 
> 2. The update.packages function should default to checkBuilt=T, so
> users who update R will, unless they actively resist, get the packages
> that match their installation.
> 
> The current install path, including the version number, creates a very
> confusing scenario for updates of packages.  Did you ever study the R
> for Windows FAQ discussion on what a user is supposed to do about the
> old lib dir and packages? I'm pretty good at computing and I can
> barely figure it out.  By adding checkBuilt=T, we completely eliminate
> that problem.
> 
> These suggestions bring the Windows install closer to the default
> Unix/Linux install. Install R in one place, don't keep version numbers
> in the install path, etc.

Paul makes some excellent points here.   I don't use Windows, but I too
am surprised about these complications.  Does anyone have experience of
other interfaces to R and how they deal with this?

As an aside, I've recently started using "homebrew" for my mac for
installing software, and I think it is pretty smart.  (Ok, this is a
unix machine, rather than windows, but same principle applies.)  It does
the install into say /usr/local/Cellar/R-2.12.1/...  and then puts
symlinks into /usr/local/bin so that the /usr/local/bin always points to
the most recently installed version.  Mac users - take a look:

http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

Stephen