Admin mode vs user mode

How rig’s two installation modes differ, where files go on each platform, and how to switch between them.

rig can manage R in one of two modes. In the default admin mode R is installed system-wide, shared by every user on the machine, and most operations need sudo or an administrator account. In user mode rig installs everything into your home directory and never needs elevated privileges.

The trade-off is simple: admin mode gives you a conventional, shared, system-wide R that any tool expects to find in the usual place; user mode lets you install and switch R versions on a machine where you have no administrator rights, at the cost of putting R somewhere non-standard and having to keep a directory on your PATH.

At a glance

	Admin mode (default)	User mode
Privileges	`sudo` / administrator for most operations	none
Shared between users	yes	no — just your account
Needs `PATH` setup	no (`/usr/local/bin` is usually on `PATH`)	yes (the quick-link dir must be on `PATH`)
R install root	platform default (below)	in your home directory (below)
Best for	your own machine, shared servers you admin	locked-down machines, no admin rights

Where things go:

Platform	Mode	R install root	Quick links (`R`, `Rscript`, `R-*`)
macOS	admin	`/Library/Frameworks/R.framework`	`/usr/local/bin`
macOS	user	`~/.local/share/rig/r`	`~/.local/bin`
Linux	admin	`/opt/R`	`/usr/local/bin`
Linux	user	`~/.local/share/rig/r`	`~/.local/bin`
Windows	admin	`C:\Program Files\R`	`C:\Program Files\R\bin`
Windows	user	`%APPDATA%\rig\data\r`	`%USERPROFILE%\.local\bin`

Admin mode

Admin mode is the current default. R is installed into the platform’s usual system location and rig creates quick links (R, Rscript, and versioned R-4.5.1-style links) in a system-wide binary directory that is normally already on everyone’s PATH.

Because these locations are outside your home directory, operations that write to them — adding or removing an R version, switching the default, creating the quick links — switch to the root or administrator user as needed. On Unix rig runs sudo (prompting for your password); on Windows it elevates through a UAC prompt. On macOS admin mode also restricts the permissions of the system R library so that packages are not installed into it accidentally.

This mode is the right choice on a server where you have administrator rights and want a single shared R for everyone.

User mode

In user mode rig installs R entirely inside your home directory and creates the quick links in a per-user binary directory. Nothing lives outside your account, so rig never needs sudo or an administrator account in this mode — it is designed for machines where you do not have, or do not want to use, elevated privileges.

The one thing to take care of is your PATH: the quick-link directory (~/.local/bin, or %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin on Windows) must be on it for the R and Rscript commands to be found. The user-mode install script sets this up for you; if you install rig from an archive manually, add the directory yourself.

Note

Admin mode is the default today, but a future version of rig is likely to make user mode the default. If you want to future-proof your setup — or you simply prefer an R installation that needs no elevated privileges — you can opt into user mode now with the steps below.

How rig picks the mode

rig resolves the mode from the first of these that is set, and otherwise defaults to admin mode:

The global --user / --admin flags on the command line.
The RIG_MODE environment variable (user or admin).
The mode key in the rig config file.

So you can choose the mode at three different scopes:

# Just this one command:
rig add release --user

# For a shell session (or exported in your profile):
export RIG_MODE=user

# Persistently, saved in the rig config file:
rig config set mode=user
rig config set mode=admin

Switching an existing setup to user mode

If you already have an admin-mode setup, rig system user-mode migrates it in one step:

It sets the rig mode configuration to user.
Reinstalls your admin-mode R versions in user mode and restores the previous default version and version aliases. (R versions already present in user mode are not reinstalled.)
Removes the system-wide admin-mode R installations.
Removes the system-wide quick links.

Steps 3 and 4 delete files outside your home directory, so they need sudo or an administrator account — rig self-escalates for just that part. Use --no-reinstall to skip the reinstall and only clean up, or --keep-install and --keep-links to leave the admin-mode installations and/or links in place. With both --keep-* flags nothing outside your home directory is touched, so no elevated privileges are needed at all.

To go back, set the mode to admin again (rig config set mode=admin) and reinstall the R versions you want.

Advanced: custom directories

You can override where rig puts things with an environment variable or a config key:

Quick-link directory — RIG_BINARY_DIR env var, or the binary-dir config key. This applies in both modes, overriding the default /usr/local/bin (admin) or ~/.local/bin (user).
R install root — RIG_R_INSTALL_DIR env var, or the r-install-dir config key. This only takes effect in user mode. In admin mode R is installed by the platform installer (the Apple .pkg, the Windows installer, or a Linux distribution package) to its fixed system location and cannot be relocated.