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Detect R installations on the system

Source: R/find_routes.R
find_routes.Rd

Scans the current machine for every R installation it can find, across multiple sources per platform, and returns a tidy data frame of results.

Usage

find_routes(search_paths = NULL)

Arguments

search_paths

An optional character vector of additional paths to search. Each element may be a directory containing bin/Rscript (or bin/x64/Rscript.exe on Windows), or a direct path to an Rscript executable.

Value

A data frame with one row per unique R installation and the following columns:

version

Character. R version string, e.g. "4.4.1".

rscript_path

Character. Absolute path to the Rscript executable.

home

Character. The installation directory (R.home()), i.e. where this R is installed. Normalized lexically for comparison.

library

Character. The installation's primary library location (.libPaths()[1] under a vanilla session) - where install.packages() writes by default. This is the effective package store; two installs that share a library hold the same packages. Normalized lexically for comparison. NA if it could not be determined.

is_current

Logical. TRUE for the R session running courieR.

Details

Detection sources by platform:

Windows

  • HKLM registry (SOFTWARE\R-core\R) - standard admin installs via the CRAN Windows installer.

  • HKCU registry (SOFTWARE\R-core\R) - non-admin installs that register under the current user hive only.

  • %ProgramFiles%\R - directory scan for admin installs not in the registry.

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\R - rig-managed and other user-local installs.

  • %USERPROFILE%\Documents\R - installs placed in the user's Documents folder.

  • rig (rig list) - any additional versions managed by rig that were not found by path scanning.

macOS

  • /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions - system-wide CRAN installer.

  • ~/Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions - user-local framework installs (no admin required).

  • Homebrew: /opt/homebrew/opt/r (Apple Silicon) and /usr/local/opt/r (Intel).

  • rig (rig list) - rig-managed versions.

Linux

  • /opt/R - rig system-wide installs.

  • ~/.local/share/rig/R - rig user-local installs.

  • conda environments (active $CONDA_PREFIX).

  • System Rscript on $PATH.

Symlinks are resolved via fs::path_real() so that duplicate entries from different detection sources pointing to the same executable are collapsed.

Each candidate is probed in a short subprocess. The probe timeout defaults to 30 seconds and can be adjusted via options(courier.probe_timeout = ); installations whose probe times out are skipped with a warning rather than silently dropped.

Examples

# \donttest{
routes <- find_routes()
routes[, c("version", "rscript_path", "is_current")]
#>   version             rscript_path is_current
#> 1   4.6.0 /opt/R/4.6.0/bin/Rscript      FALSE

# include a non-standard install
routes <- find_routes(search_paths = "/opt/custom-r/bin/Rscript")
# }