How do I change the default library path for R packages

Question

I have attempted to install R and R studio on the local drive on my work computer as opposed to the organization network folder because anything that runs through the network is really slow. When installing, the destination path shows that it's my local C:drive. However, when I install a new package, the default path shown is my network drive and there is no option to change:

.libPaths()
[1] "\\\\The library/path/I/don't/want"
[2] "C:/Program Files/R/R-3.2.1/library" 

I'm running windows 7 professional. How can I remove library path [1] and make path [2] my primary for all base packages and all new packages that I install?

Answer 1

Windows 7/10/11: If your C:\Program Files (or wherever R is installed) is blocked for writing, as mine is, then you'll get frustrated editing RProfile.site (as I did). As specified in the accepted answer, I updated R_LIBS_USER and it worked. However, even after reading the fine manual several times and extensive searching, it took me several hours to do this. In the spirit of saving someone else time...

Let's assume you want your packages to reside in C:\R\Library:

1. Create the folder C:\R\Library. Next I need to add this folder to the R_LIBS_USER path:
2. Click Start --> Control Panel --> User Accounts --> Change my environmental variables
3. The Environmental Variables window pops up. If you see R_LIBS_USER, highlight it and click Edit. Otherwise click New. Both actions open a window with fields for Variable and Value.
4. In my case, R_LIBS_USER was already there, and Value was a path to my desktop. I added to the path the folder that I created, separated by semicolon. C:\R\Library;C:\Users\Eric.Krantz\Desktop\R stuff\Packages.

(NOTE: In the last step, I could have removed the path to the Desktop location and simply left C:\R\Library).

Answer 2

See help(Startup) and help(.libPaths) as you have several possibilities where this may have gotten set. Among them are

• setting R_LIBS_USER
• assigning .libPaths() in .Rprofile or Rprofile.site

and more.

In this particular case you need to go backwards and unset whereever \\\\The library/path/I/don't/want is set.

To otherwise ignore it you need to override it use explicitly i.e. via

library("somePackage", lib.loc=.libPaths()[-1])

when loading a package.

Answer 3

Facing the very same problem (avoiding the default path in a network) I came up to this solution with the hints given in other answers.

The solution is editing the Rprofile file to overwrite the variable R_LIBS_USER which by default points to the home directory.

Here the steps:

1. Create the target destination folder for the libraries, e.g., ~\target.
2. Find the Rprofile file. In my case it was at C:\Program Files\R\R-3.3.3\library\base\R\Rprofile.
3. Edit the file and change the definition the variable R_LIBS_USER. In my case, I replaced the this line file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER"), "R", with file.path("~\target", "R",.

The documentation that support this solution is here

Original file with:

 if(!nzchar(Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER")))
     Sys.setenv(R_LIBS_USER=
                file.path(Sys.getenv("R_USER"), "R",
                          "win-library",
                          paste(R.version$major,
                                sub("\\..*$", "", R.version$minor),
                                sep=".")
                          )) 

Modified file:

if(!nzchar(Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER")))
     Sys.setenv(R_LIBS_USER=
                file.path("~\target", "R",
                          "win-library",
                          paste(R.version$major,
                                sub("\\..*$", "", R.version$minor),
                                sep=".")
                          ))

Answer 4

Windows 10 on a Network

Having your packages stored on the network drive can slow down the performance of R / R Studio considerably, and you spend a lot of time waiting for the libraries to load/install, due to the bottlenecks of having to retrieve and push data over the server back to your local host. See the following for instructions on how to create an .RProfile on your local machine:

1. Create a directory called C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\R\3.4 (or whatever R version you are using, and where you will store your local R packages- your directory location may be different than mine)
2. On R Console, type Sys.getenv("HOME") to get your home directory (this is where your .RProfile will be stored and R will always check there for packages- and this is on the network if packages are stored there)
3. Create a file called .Rprofile and place it in :\YOUR\HOME\DIRECTORY\ON_NETWORK (the directory you get after typing Sys.getenv("HOME") in R Console)
4. File contents of .Rprofile should be like this:

#search 2 places for packages- install new packages to first directory- load built-in packages from the second (this is from your base R package- will be different for some)

.libPaths(c("C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\R\3.4", "C:/Program Files/Microsoft/R Client/R_SERVER/library"))

message("*** Setting libPath to local hard drive ***")

#insert a sleep command at line 12 of the unpackPkgZip function. So, just after the package is unzipped.

trace(utils:::unpackPkgZip, quote(Sys.sleep(2)), at=12L, print=TRUE)

message("*** Add 2 second delay when installing packages, to accommodate virus scanner for R 3.4 (fixed in R 3.5+)***")

# fix problem with tcltk for sqldf package: https://github.com/ggrothendieck/sqldf#problem-involvling-tcltk

options(gsubfn.engine = "R")

message("*** Successfully loaded .Rprofile ***")

5. Restart R Studio and verify that you see that the messages above are displayed.

Now you can enjoy faster performance of your application on local host, vs. storing the packages on the network and slowing everything down.

Answer 5

I was struggling for a while with this as my work computer (with Windows 10) created the default user library on a network drive, which would slow down R and RStudio to an unusable state.

In case this helps someone, this is the easiest way I found, without requiring admin rights:

• make sure the directory you want to install your packages into exists. If you want to respect the convention, use: C:\Users\username\R\win-library\rversion (for example, something like: C:\Users\janebloggs\R\win-library\3.6)
• create a .Renviron file in your home directory (which might be on the network drive?), and in it, write one single line that defines the R_LIBS_USER variable to be your custom path:

R_LIBS_USER=C:\Users\janebloggs\R\win-library\3.6

(feel free to add comments too, with lines starting with #)

If a .Renviron file exists, R will read it at startup and use the variables as they are defined in there, before running the code in the .Rprofile. You can read about it in help(Startup).

Now it should be persistent between sessions!

Answer 6

After a couple of hours of trying to solve the issue in several ways, some of which are described here, for me (on Win 10) the option of creating a Renviron file worked, but a little different from what was written here above.

The task is to change the value of the variable R_LIBS_USER. To do this two steps needed:

1. Create the file named Renviron (without dot) in the folder \Program\etc\ (Program is the directory where R is installed--for example, for me it was C:\Program Files\R\R-4.0.0\etc)
2. Insert a line in Renviron with new path: R_LIBS_USER = "C:/R/Library"

After that, reboot R and use .libPaths() to confirm the default directory changed.

Answer 7

I think I tried all of the above and it didn't work for me. This worked, though:

1. In home directory, make a file called ".Renviron"

2. In that file, write:

    .libPaths(new = "/my/path/to/libs")
   

3. Save and restart R if you had it open

Answer 8

For linux (I'm using Fedora 38 XFCE), in the ~/.bash_profile file I added:

# R
export R_PROFILE_USER="${HOME}/.Rprofile"
export R_LIBS_USER="${HOME}/path/wanted/as/R/library"

Afterwards, I created the ~/.Rprofile file with this content:

.libPaths("~/path/wanted/as/R/library")

Pay attention to the absence of the ${HOME} environment variable (replaced by tilde, ~, expansion) in the path indicated for .libPaths() into ~/.Rprofile file, because otherwise it will not work.