[r] How do you change library location in R?

Due to the new R 2.11 release, I want to implement Dirk's suggestion here.

So for that I am asking - How can I (permanently) change R's library path? (The best solution would be one that can be run from within R)

I've used this successfully inside R script:

library("reshape2",lib.loc="/path/to/R-packages/")

useful if for whatever reason libraries are in more than one place.

You can edit Rprofile in the base library (in 'C:/Program Files/R.Files/library/base/R' by default) to include code to be run on startup. Append

########        User code        ########
.libPaths('C:/my/dir')

to Rprofile using any text editor (like Notepad) to cause R to add 'C:/my/dir' to the list of libraries it knows about.

(Notepad can't save to Program Files, so save your edited Rprofile somewhere else and then copy it in using Windows Explorer.)

This post is just to mention an additional option. In case you need to set custom R libs in your Linux shell script you may easily do so by

export R_LIBS="~/R/lib"

See R admin guide on complete list of options.

I'm late to the party but I encountered the same thing when I tried to get fancy and move my library and then had files being saved to a folder that was outdated:

.libloc <<- "C:/Program Files/rest_of_your_Library_FileName"

One other point to mention is that for Windows Computers, if you copy the address from Windows Explorer, you have to manually change the '\' to a '/' for the directory to be recognized.