Computer Code Fabric by Colleen Greene is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
install R and RStudio
install git
create a library for packages
test the installation
Windows users may have to login as an Administrator (localmgr) before installing the software.
- Install R for your OS: https://cloud.r-project.org
- Install RStudio, a user interface for R: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/#Desktop
If you already have R and RStudio installed, please update to the most recent releases and update your R packages as well.
If you need additional assistance for Mac OS or Linux, these links might be useful
- Install R and RStudio on Mac OS by Michael Galarnyk (or you can Google more recent instructions)
- How to Install R Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial by Kris Eberwein (or you can Google more recent instructions)
Git is version control software you install on your machine. Once installed, we access its functionality via the RStudio interface. Jenny Bryan provided these installation instructions for a workshop I attended. I suggest you read all the instructions before starting.
- Git already installed?
- Windows install
- Mac OS install
- Linux install
Optional reading: Read sections 1 and 2 of Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about version control? for a good introduction to version control.
Packages are like “apps” for R. As Hadley Wickham (2014) states, “Packages are the fundamental units of reproducible R code. They include reusable functions, the documentation that describes how to use them, and sample data.”
If we store packages in a library separate from the base R installation, then when you update R, you don’t have to reinstall every package, saving a lot of time.
At the top level of your drive, create a new directory (folder) named “R”. In that directory create a new folder named “library”, for example,
- Windows:
C:/R/library - Linux:
~/R/library
Here we perform some simple checks to determine if the initial software installation is successful. If the test is unsuccessful, don’t panic—we’ll have some time in lab to make things work.
- Launch RStudio
A window should open that looks something like this.
You can type R code in the Console pane, and press Enter to run it. For example,
- in the Console type
2 + 7 - press Enter to obtain the result
#> [1] 9
We can draw a simple graph that should appear in the Plots pane.
- one line at a time, type the following lines and press Enter
t <- seq(from = 1, to = 6*pi, by = pi/16)
y <- sin(t)
plot(t, y)
Lastly, let’s check if RStudio can see git locally. In RStudio,
- Tools > Terminal > Move Focus To Terminal
- In the terminal pane, type
git --version
If RStudio is aware of your git installation, you should see a response in the terminal something like this
git version 2.17.0.windows.1
If not, no worries. We’ll take care of it in lab.
Wickham H (2014) Advanced R. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL http://adv-r.had.co.nz/
Wickham H and Grolemund G (2017) R for Data Science. O’Reilly Media, Inc., Sebastopol, CA https://r4ds.had.co.nz/