[ESS] did I just update my packages?

[Ross Boylan]

I'm running on MS Windows 7 with R installed to a local directory (no 
admin rights).  ESS 12.09-1 under emacs 24.2.1.

I just installed R 2.15.3 and copied the site-library directory from 
2.15.2.  I'm not sure if this level of change requires an update, but to 
be safe I did (from within ESS)
  update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE, ask=FALSE)
as suggested in the R Windows FAQ (however, I did not uninstall 2.15.2 
first, though the FAQ suggests that).

The bell rang and the terminal showed
--- Please select a CRAN mirror for use in this session ---
and hung.  A combination of ctl-g's and ctl-c's got me out of it.

This seems to be a well known problem on Windows.

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/ess-help/2005-December/003085.html 
indicated that issuing the command windows() before the update would 
solve the problem.  windows() did result in a graphics device window 
coming up.   update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE, ask=FALSE) ran instantly, 
but it gave no messages indicating it was doing anything.  I also tried
> > getOption("repos")[2]
>                            CRANextra
> "http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/RWin"
> >  update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE, ask=FALSE, 
> repos=getOption("repos")[2])
which also ran instantly and silently.

Does anyone know if this means my packages are up to date or not? Should 
update.packages() be chattier (I seem to recall it listing each package 
and giving its status when I've run it before)?

Thanks.
Ross Boylan