Where does R store packages

Question

The install packages   function in R is the automatic unzipping utility that gets and install packages in R    How do I find out what directory R has chosen to store packages  How can I change the directory in which R stores and accesses packages

User · Answer

Thanks for the direction from the above two answerers. James Thompson's suggestion worked best for Windows users.

Go to where your R program is installed. This is referred to as R_Home in the literature. Once you find it, go to the /etc subdirectory.
```
C:\R\R-2.10.1\etc
```
Select the file in this folder named Rprofile.site. I open it with VIM. You will find this is a bare-bones file with less than 20 lines of code. I inserted the following inside the code:
```
# my custom library path
.libPaths("C:/R/library")
```
(The comment added to keep track of what I did to the file.)
In R, typing the .libPaths() function yields the first target at C:/R/Library

NOTE: there is likely more than one way to achieve this, but other methods I tried didn't work for some reason.

User · Answer

The install packages command looks through the  libPaths variable  Here s what mine defaults to on OSX    gt   libPaths    1    Library Frameworks R framework Resources library    I don t install packages there by default  I prefer to have them installed in my home directory  In my  Rprofile  I have this line    libPaths    Users tex lib R      This adds the directory   Users tex lib R  to the front of the  libPaths variable

User · Answer

You do not want the      Use  libPaths  C  R library   in you Rprofile site file  And make sure you have correct   symbol  Shift-2

User · Answer

This is documented in the  R Installation and Administration  manual that came with your installation   On my Linux box   R gt   libPaths    1    usr local lib R site-library    usr lib R site-library         3    usr lib R library             R gt     meaning that the default path is the first of these  You can override that via an argument to both install packages    from inside R  or R CMD INSTALL  outside R    You can also override by setting the R LIBS USER variable

[r] Where does R store packages?

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