FAQ

Why does rig create a user package library?

Installing non-base packages into a user package library has several benefits:

• The system library is not writeable for regular users on some systems (Windows and Linux, typically), so we might as well create a properly versioned user library at the default place.
• Some tools need a clean R environment, with base packages only, and do not work well if user packages are installed into the system library. E.g. R CMD check is such a tool, and https://github.com/r-lib/revdepcheck is another.
• You can delete an R installation (e.g. with rig rm) and then install it again, without losing your R packages.

Why does rig install pak?

To be able to install R packages efficiently, from CRAN, Bioconductor or GitHub, right from the start. pak also supports installing system libraries automatically on some Linux systems.

If you don’t want rig add to install pak, use the --without-pak option.

Why does rig change the permissions of the system library (on macOS)?

To make sure that you don’t install packages accidentally into the system library. See “Why does rig create a user package library?” above.

Why does rig set the default CRAN mirror?

To avoid the extra work the users need to spend on this.

The https://cloud.r-project.org mirror is usually better than the other, in that it is a CDN that is close to most users, and that it is updated more often.

If you want to use a different mirror, you can set the repos option in your .Rprofile, so the rig repo settings will be ignored.

You can also use the --without-cran-mirror option of rig add.

Why does rig set up P3M?

P3M (Posit Public Package Manager) is generally superior to a regular CRAN mirror on Windows and many Linux systems.

On Linux it includes binary packages for many popular distributions.

On Windows, it includes up to date binary packages for older R versions as well.

To avoid P3M use the --without-p3m option (or the legacy --without-rspm) option of rig add.

Can rig install R without admin permissions

Yes. rig has a user mode that installs everything into your home directory, so it never needs sudo or administrator rights. In user mode rig installs R into ~/.local/share/rig/r (%APPDATA%\rig\data\r on Windows) and creates quick links in ~/.local/bin (%USERPROFILE%\.local\bin on Windows), which need to be on your PATH.

rig system user-mode switches to user mode and migrates an existing admin-mode setup (see rig system user-mode --help).

Use rig config set mode=user and rig config set mode=admin to switch between user and admin mode.

Alternatively, switch to user mode temporarily by setting the RIG_MODE=user environment variable, or by passing the --user flag to any rig command.

The default is still admin mode, which installs R system-wide and needs sudo (or an administrator account on Windows).

How is rig different from RSwitch?

While there is a small overlap in functionality, rig and RSwitch are very different. I suggest you look over the features of both to decide which one suits your needs better.

If you like rig and also like the extra features of RSwitch, then you can use them together just fine: changing the default R version in RSwitch also changes it in rig and vice versa. You can use the rig cli and the RSwitch app together, or you can also use both menu bar apps at the same time.

Which domains does rig download files from?

Here is the list of domains that you need to enable in your proxy. Note that some of these, in particular the GitHub ones, might trigger redirects.

• https://api.r-hub.io/rversions for resolving R versions, i.e. this is needed for rig install, rig available, etc.
• rig install downloads pak from https://r-lib.github.io/p/pak unless requested otherwise.
• rig install sets https://cloud.r-project.org as the default CRAN mirror, unless requested otherwise.
• rig install sets https://packagemanager.posit.co as the Posit Package Manager CRAN mirror on supported Linux systems, unless requested otherwise.
• rig install downloads the EPEL package from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel on RHEL systems.
• rig rtools downloads Rtools from the following URLs on Windows:
  • https://github.com/r-hub/rtools44/releases,
  • https://github.com/r-hub/rtools43/releases,
  • https://github.com/r-hub/rtools42/releases,
  • https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools
• https://github.com/R-macos/gcc-darwin-arm64/releases, https://github.com/fxcoudert/gfortran-for-macOS/releases and whatever domains Homebrew is using, to download system packages for rig sysreqs on macOS.

Feedback

Please open an issue in our issue tracker at https://github.com/r-lib/rig/issues