This is a short post giving steps on how to actually install R packages. Let’s suppose you want to install the ggplot2 package. Well nothing could be easier. We just fire up an R shell and type:

> install.packages("ggplot2")

In theory the package should just install, however:

• if you are using Linux and don’t have root access, this command won’t work.
• you will be asked to select your local mirror, i.e. which server should you use to download the package.

Installing packages without root access

First, you need to designate a directory where you will store the downloaded packages. On my machine, I use the directory /data/Rpackages/ After creating a package directory, to install a package we use the command:

> install.packages("ggplot2", lib="/data/Rpackages/")
> library(ggplot2, lib.loc="/data/Rpackages/")


It’s a bit of a pain having to type /data/Rpackages/ all the time. To avoid this burden,  we create a file .Renviron in our home area, and add the line R_LIBS=/data/Rpackages/ to it. This means that whenever you start R, the directory /data/Rpackages/ is added to the list of places to look for R packages and so:

> install.packages("ggplot2")
> library(ggplot2)

just works!

Setting the repository

Every time you install a R package, you are asked which repository R should use. To set the repository and avoid having to specify this at every package install, simply:

• create a file .Rprofile in your home area.
• Add the following piece of code to it:


cat(".Rprofile: Setting UK repositoryn")
r = getOption("repos") # hard code the UK repo for CRAN
r["CRAN"] = "http://cran.uk.r-project.org"
options(repos = r)
rm(r)


I found this tip in a stackoverflow answer .