How do I change the default library path for R packages

Question

I have attempted to install R and R studio on the local drive on my work computer as opposed to the organization network folder because anything that runs through the network is really slow  When installing  the destination path shows that it s my local C drive  However  when I install a new package  the default path shown is my network drive and there is no option to change    libPaths    1       The library path I don t want   2   C  Program Files R R-3 2 1 library     I m running windows 7 professional  How can I remove library path  1  and make path  2  my primary for all base packages and all new packages that I install

User · Answer

Windows 7 10   If your C  Program Files  or wherever R is installed  is blocked for writing  as mine is  then you ll get frustrated editing RProfile site  as I did   As specified above  I updated R LIBS USER and it worked  However  even after reading the fine manual several times and extensive searching  it took me several hours to do this  In the spirit of saving someone else time    Let s assume you want your packages to reside in C  R Library   Create the folder C  R Library Click Start -- gt  Control Panel -- gt  User Accounts -- gt  Change my environmental variables The Environmental Variables window pops up  If you see R LIBS USER  highlight it and click Edit  Otherwise click New  Both actions open a window with fields for Variable and Value  In my case  R LIBS USER was already there  and the value was a path to my desktop  I added to the path the folder that I created  separated by semicolon as mentioned above  C  R Library C  Users Eric Krantz Desktop R stuff Packages    NOTE  I could have removed the path to the Desktop location and simply left C  R Library

User · Answer

Facing the very same problem  avoiding the default path in a network  I came up to this solution with the hints given in other answers   The solution is editing the Rprofile file to overwrite the variable R LIBS USER which by default points to the home directory   Here the steps    Create the target destination folder for the libraries  e g     target  Find the Rprofile file  In my case it was at C  Program Files R R-3 3 3 library base R Rprofile  Edit the file and change the definition the variable R LIBS USER  In my case  I replaced the this line file path Sys getenv  R USER     R   with file path    target    R      The documentation that support this solution is here   Original file with    if  nzchar Sys getenv  R LIBS USER          Sys setenv R LIBS USER                  file path Sys getenv  R USER     R                              win-library                             paste R version major                                  sub               R version minor                                   sep                                      Modified file   if  nzchar Sys getenv  R LIBS USER          Sys setenv R LIBS USER                  file path    target    R                              win-library                             paste R version major                                  sub               R version minor                                   sep

User · Answer

See help Startup  and help  libPaths  as you have several possibilities where this may have gotten set  Among them are   setting R LIBS USER assigning  libPaths   in  Rprofile or Rprofile site   and more    In this particular case you need to go backwards and unset whereever     The library path I don t want is set    To otherwise ignore it you need to override it use explicitly i e  via  library  somePackage   lib loc  libPaths   -1     when loading a package

User · Answer

After a couple of hours of trying to solve the issue in several ways  some of which are described here  for me  on Win 10  the option of creating a Renviron file worked  but a little different from what was written here above   The task is to change the value of the variable R LIBS USER  To do this two steps needed    Create the file named Renviron  without dot  in the folder  Program etc    Programm is the directory where the R installed  for example for me it was c  Program Files R R-4 0 0 etc  Insert a line in Renviron with new path  R LIBS USER c  R Library   It s been working for a few days already

User · Answer

Windows 10 on a Network Having your packages stored on the network drive can slow down the performance of R   R Studio considerably  and you spend a lot of time waiting for the libraries to load install  due to the bottlenecks of having to retrieve and push data over the server back to your local host  See the following for instructions on how to create an  RProfile on your local machine   Create a directory called C  Users xxxxxx Documents R 3 4  or whatever R version you are using  and where you will store your local R packages- your directory location may be different than mine  On R Console  type Sys getenv  quot HOME quot   to get your home directory  this is where your  RProfile will be stored and R will always check there for packages- and this is on the network if packages are stored there  Create a file called  Rprofile and place it in   YOUR HOME DIRECTORY ON NETWORK  the directory you get after typing Sys getenv  quot HOME quot   in R Console  File contents of  Rprofile should be like this    search 2 places for packages- install new packages to first directory- load built-in packages from the second  this is from your base R package- will be different for some   libPaths c  quot C  Users xxxxxx Documents R 3 4 quot    quot C  Program Files Microsoft R Client R SERVER library quot     message  quot     Setting libPath to local hard drive     quot     insert a sleep command at line 12 of the unpackPkgZip function   So  just after the package is unzipped  trace utils   unpackPkgZip  quote Sys sleep 2    at 12L  print TRUE   message  quot     Add 2 second delay when installing packages  to accommodate virus scanner for R 3 4  fixed in R 3 5      quot      fix problem with tcltk for sqldf package  https   github com ggrothendieck sqldf problem-involvling-tcltk  options gsubfn engine    quot R quot    message  quot     Successfully loaded  Rprofile     quot     Restart R Studio and verify that you see that the messages above are displayed   Now you can enjoy faster performance of your application on local host  vs  storing the packages on the network and slowing everything down

User · Answer

I was struggling for a while with this as my work computer  with Windows 10  created the default user library on a network drive  which would slow down R and RStudio to an unusable state   In case this helps someone  this is the easiest way I found  without requiring admin rights    make sure the directory you want to install your packages into exists  If you want to respect the convention  use  C  Users username R win-library rversion  for example  something like  C  Users janebloggs R win-library 3 6  create a  Renviron file in your home directory  which might be on the network drive    and in it  write one single line that defines the R LIBS USER variable to be your custom path    R LIBS USER C  Users janebloggs R win-library 3 6   feel free to add comments too  with lines starting with     If a  Renviron file exists  R will read it at startup and use the variables as they are defined in there  before running the code in the  Rprofile  You can read about it in help Startup    Now it should be persistent between sessions

[r] How do I change the default library path for R packages

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