This blog is updated daily..
A general description is here.
The installer has many fewer options with more files always being installed, as file space is nowadays no longer an issue.
It is now possible to select ‘64-bit Files’ from the standard installer even on a 32-bit version of Windows.
Using a prompt of more than 80 characters in ‘readline()’ could cause a buffer overflow in Rterm. (Reported by Henrik Bengtsson.)
The supported toolchain has changed since the one used for R 2.12.0 to
2.14.x: see the‘R Installation and Administration manual’. Compiled
code (except DLLs) may be incompatible with previous toolchains (and
compiled C++ code almost certainly will be).
This is a ‘multilib’ toolchain: there is a single set of tools in the ‘bin’ directory and which sub-architecture is selected by a flag: in most cases ‘-m32’ _vs_ ‘-m64’.
There is a new macro (aka make variable) ‘SHLIB_PTHREAD_FLAGS’. This
is set to ‘-pthread’ on builds which support it, and should be included
in both ‘PKG_CPPFLAGS’ (or the Fortran or F9x equivalents) and
‘PKG_LIBS’.
As the current toolchain uses only 32-bit executables, it is possible to compile a package for both architectures on 32-bit Windows provided both architectures of R have been installed: use ‘R CMD INSTALL --compile-both’.
Using a prompt of more than 80 characters in ‘readline()’ could cause a
buffer overflow in Rterm. (Reported by Henrik Bengtsson.)
The preferred toolchain has changed since the one used for R 2.12.0 to 2.14.1: see the‘R Installation and Administration manual’. Compiled code (except DLLs) may be incompatible with previous toolchains (and compiled C++ code almost certainly will be: users of ‘Rcpp’ take care).
Ensure that the settings in ‘MkRules.local’ are appropriate to the toolchain you use.
There is a new macro (aka make variable) ‘SHLIB_PTHREAD_FLAGS’. This is set to ‘-pthread’ on builds using toolchains which support it, and should be included in both ‘PKG_CPPFLAGS’ (or the Fortran or F9x equivalents) and ‘PKG_LIBS’.
The sources (and packages) can now be compiled using the multilib toolchain developed for R 2.15.x: see the ‘MULTI’ macro in ‘MkRules.dist’. This toolchain is used for the CRAN binary distribution.
It is now possible to select ‘Add 64-bit components’ from the standard installer (and to select the 64-bit components for a custom install) even on a 32-bit version of Windows.
The sources (and packages) can now be compiled using the multilib toolchain recommended for R 2.15.x: see the ‘MULTI’ macro in ‘MkRules.dist’.
The fix for PR#14543 caused stack problems with outputting large R objects (e.g. data frames of 25,000 items). (PR#14698)
Since the toolchain uses only 32-bit executables, it is possible to compile a package for both architectures on 32-bit Windows provided both architectures of R have been installed: use ‘R CMD INSTALL --compile-both’.
Since the toolchain uses only 32-bit executables, it is possible to compile a package for both architectures on 32-bit Windows provide both architectures of R have been installed: use ‘R CMD INSTALL --compile-both’.
There is a new function ‘Sys.junction()’ to create junction points on NTFS file systems.
The behaviour of ‘unlink()’ for reparse points (including junctions and symbolic links) has changed. It no longer follow links (deleting the contents of the link target rather than the link), and it is able to delete the link itself (given sufficient permissions).
The 32-bit and 64-bit builds are now treated equally, as it is anticipated that 64-bit R will soon be (if not already) the more commonly used. This entails:
The ‘Rterm’ or ‘Rgui’ title mentions 32-bit as well as 64-bit.
The desktop icons are labelled ‘R i386’ and ‘R x64’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ for a package with compiled code will fail if compilation fails for any of the installed sub-architectures: use ‘--no-multiarch’ to override this.
‘file.symlink()’ is now implemented on NTFS file systems on Vista or later, for accounts which have suitable permissions (and most will not). It can link existing directories, and existing-or-not files.
Using a prompt of more than 80 characters in ‘readline()’ could cause a buffer overflow in Rterm. (Reported by Henrik Bengtsson.)
‘file.symlink()’ is now implemented on NTFS file systems on Vista or later, for accounts which have suitable permissions (and most will not).
The 32-bit and 64-bit builds are now treated equally, as it is anticipated that 64-bit R will soon be (if not already) the more comonly used. This entails:
The ‘Rterm’ or ‘Rgui’ title mentions 32-bit as well as 64-bit.
The desktop icons are labelled ‘R i386’ and ‘R x64’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ for a package with compiled code will fail if compilation fails for any of the installed sub-architectures: use ‘--no-multiarch’ to override this.
Optimization level ‘-O3’ is now used by default on 64-bit builds as
well as 32-bit ones.
The ‘Save as’ menu item on the script editor adds extension ‘.R’ to a file name without an extension.
In package ‘parallel’, ‘detectCores(logical = FALSE)’ makes an OS-dependent attempt to find the number of physical cores. It usually succeeds, even on XP.
The directory pointed to by ‘USER_LOCAL’ can now have architecture-specific sub-directories ‘lib/i386’ and ‘lib/x64’.
The fix for PR#14543 caused stack problems with outputing large R objects (e.g. data frames of 25,000 items). (PR#14698)
In a double-byte locale (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), ‘grep()’ and friends might have used byte-wise matching of strings in the native encoding. (PR#14622)
‘bitmap()’ and ‘dev2bitmap()’ look for ‘gswin64c.exe’ (as used by
64-bit GhostScript), in preference to ‘gswin32c.exe’.
‘bitmap()’ and ‘dev2bitmap()’ look for ‘gswin64c.exe’ (as used by 64-bit GhostScript), in preference to ‘gswin32c.exe’.
There is a new macro (aka make variable) ‘SHLIB_PTHREAD_FLAGS’. This is set to ‘-pthread’ on builds which support it, and should be included in both ‘PKG_CPPFLAGS’ (or the Fortran or F9x equivalents) and ‘PKG_LIBS’.
The supported toolchain has changed since the one used for R 2.12.0 to 2.14.x: see the‘R Installation and Administration manual’. Compiled code (except DLLs) may be incompatible with previous toolchains (and compiled C++ code almost certainly will be).
This is a ‘multilib’ toolchain: there is a single set of tools in the ‘bin’ directory and which sub-architecture is selected by a flag: in most cases ‘-m32’ _vs_ ‘-m64’.
Optimization level ‘-O3’ is now used by default on 64-bit builds as well as 32-bit ones.
The supported toolchain has changed since the one used for R 2.12.0 to 2.14.x: see the‘R Installation and Administration manual’. Compiled code (except DLLs) may be incompatible with previous toolchains (and compiled C++ code almost certainly will be).
‘bitmap()’ and ‘dev2bitmap()’ look for ‘gswin64c.exe’ (as used by 64-bit GhostScript), in preference to ‘gswin32c.exe’.
The directory pointed to by ‘USER_LOCAL’ can now have
architecture-specific sub-directories ‘lib/i386’ and ‘lib/x64’.
The directory pointed to by ‘USER_LOCAL’ can now have architecture-specific sub-directories ‘lib/i386’ and ‘lib/x64’.
The preferred toolchain has changed since the one used for R 2.12.0 to 2.14.x: see the‘R Installation and Administration manual’. Compiled code (except DLLs) may be incompatible with previous toolchains (and compiled C++ code almost certainly will be).
The directory pointed to by ‘USER_LOCAL’ can now have architecture-specific sub-directories ‘lib/i386’ and ‘lib/x64’.
The ‘Save as’ menu item on the script editor adds extension ‘.R’ to a file name without an extension.
In package ‘parallel’, ‘detectCores(logical = FALSE)’ makes an OS-dependent attempt to find the number of physical cores. It usually succeeds, even on XP.
The fix for PR#14543 caused stack problems with outputing large R objects (e.g. data frames of 25,000 items). (PR#14698)
In a double-byte locale (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), ‘grep()’ and friends might have used byte-wise matching of strings in the native encoding. (PR#14622)
The fix for PR#14543 caused stack problems with outputing large R objects (e.g. data frames of 25,000 items). (PR#14698)
In a double-byte locale (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), ‘grep()’ and friends might have used byte-wise matching of strings in the native encoding. (PR#14622)
In package ‘parallel’, ‘detectCores(logical = FALSE)’ makes an OS-dependent attempt to find the number of physical cores. It usually succeeds, even on XP.
‘postscript(file = "|cmd")’ now works on Windows.
In package ‘parallel’, ‘detectCores(logical = FALSE)’ makes an OS-dependent attempt to find the number of physical cores.
The ‘Save as’ menu item on the script editor appends ‘.R’ to a file name without an extension.
The ‘Save as’ menu item on the script editor appends ‘.R’ to a file
name without an extension.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ for a package with compiled code will fail if compilation fails for any of the installed sub-architectures: use ‘--no-multiarch’ to override this.
The ‘Save as’ menu item on the script editor appends ‘.R’ to a file name without an extension.
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file association for ‘.RData’ files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to 32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
Raster drawing on ‘win.metafile()’ (or copying a plot that includes a raster image from another device to a Metafile) now does not crash. (Reported by Stefan Gelissen.)
There is a Danish translation of the RGui menus.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed
from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text
(including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the
new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter. This was done for consistency with
other devices such as ‘pdf()’.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as
on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the
bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices
‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default when building from source: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument.
If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4.
If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are
used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based
devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs
‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when
it restores an earlier install of the package.
File extensions ‘.xz’, ‘.rda’ and ‘.RData’ have been added to those
which default to binary transfer for ‘download.file()’.
‘install.packages()’ and ‘R CMD check’ have a small delay after
removing a directory to counteract some interference from anti-virus
software.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag
‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent
CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect
is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file
association for @file.RData files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to
32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
There is preliminary support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use
options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the
appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not
include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
zip.unpack() (deprecated in R 2.13.0) is defunct: use ‘unzip()’
instead.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text (including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter. This was done for consistency with other devices such as ‘pdf()’.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default when building from source: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument. If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4. If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs ‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when it restores an earlier install of the package.
File extensions ‘.xz’, ‘.rda’ and ‘.RData’ have been added to those which default to binary transfer for ‘download.file()’.
‘install.packages()’ and ‘R CMD check’ have a small delay after removing a directory to counteract some interference from anti-virus software.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file association for @file.RData files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to 32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
There is preliminary support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
zip.unpack() (deprecated in R 2.13.0) is defunct: use ‘unzip()’ instead.
‘install.packages()’ and ‘R CMD check’ have a small delay after removing a directory to counteract some interference from anti-virus software.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text (including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter. This was done for consistency with other devices such as ‘pdf()’.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default when building from source: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
The fix for PR#14583 caused inconsistent behaviour in other areas, e.g. PR#14628, extra lines appearing in image displays, and uneven bases on histograms. (PR#14632).
The fix for PR#14583 caused inconsistent behaviour in other areas, e.g.
PR#14628, extra lines appearing in image displays, and uneven bases on
histograms PR#14632.
Opening large numbers of ‘windows()’ graphics devices could cause some
of them to fail to redraw (PR#14668).
The fix for PR#14583 caused inconsistent behaviour in other areas, e.g. PR#14628, extra lines appearing in image displays, and uneven bases on histograms PR#14632.
Opening large numbers of ‘windows()’ graphics devices could cause some of them to fail to redraw (PR#14668).
File extensions ‘.xz’, ‘.rda’ and ‘.RData’ have been added to those which default to binary transfer for ‘download.file()’.
zip.unpack() (deprecated in R 2.13.0) is defunct: use ‘unzip()’ instead.
There is preliminary support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
Opening large numbers of ‘windows()’ graphics devices could cause some of them to fail to redraw (PR#14668).
Where both 32- and 64-bit versions of R are installed, the file association for @file.RData files defaults to 64-bit R (it defaulted to 32-bit in R 2.12.x and 2.13.x).
The fix for PR#14583 caused inconsistent behaviour in other areas, e.g. PR#14628, extra lines appearing in image displays, and uneven bases on histograms PR#14632.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed
from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text
(including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the
new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as
on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the
bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices
‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument.
If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4.
If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are
used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based
devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs
‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when
it restores an earlier install of the package.
There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or
‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in
‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag
‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent
CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect
is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not
include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text (including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument. If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4. If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs ‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when it restores an earlier install of the package.
There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
‘R CMD build’ no longer attempts to preserve file permissions on
Windows, because Windows (unlike POSIX-compliant OSes) stops read-only
files being deleted in version-control directories.
‘shell.exec()’ now interprets files relative to the current working
directory (rather than ‘R_HOME’).
‘file.info()’ now accepts ‘file’ names with trailing directory
separators, even though such names are invalid on Windows.
The ‘windows()’ family of devices now supports() per-pixel alpha for
raster images.
Launching the PDF manuals from the Rgui menus did not work on some
versions of Windows.
The windows() screen device would sometimes fail to plot (visibly)
points with ‘pch="."’. PR#14583
‘system()’ and related functions sometimes failed when run in ‘Rgui’.
Saving to PDF from the menu of a ‘windows()’ device used defaults for
‘family’, ‘fg’ and ‘bg’ from ‘ps.options()’ rather than ‘pdf.options()’
(but the factory-fresh defaults were the same).
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before
closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing
the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write
files in the wrong directory if closed during shutdown. The order has
been reversed.
‘R CMD build’ no longer attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows, because Windows (unlike POSIX-compliant OSes) stops read-only files being deleted in version-control directories.
‘shell.exec()’ now interprets files relative to the current working directory (rather than ‘R_HOME’).
‘file.info()’ now accepts ‘file’ names with trailing directory separators, even though such names are invalid on Windows.
The ‘windows()’ family of devices now supports() per-pixel alpha for raster images.
Launching the PDF manuals from the Rgui menus did not work on some versions of Windows.
The windows() screen device would sometimes fail to plot (visibly) points with ‘pch="."’. PR#14583
‘system()’ and related functions sometimes failed when run in ‘Rgui’.
Saving to PDF from the menu of a ‘windows()’ device used defaults for ‘family’, ‘fg’ and ‘bg’ from ‘ps.options()’ rather than ‘pdf.options()’ (but the factory-fresh defaults were the same).
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write files in the wrong directory if closed during shutdown. The order has been reversed.
‘R CMD INSTALL’ preserves the package-directory modification time when it restores an earlier install of the package.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs ‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE)’.
Compilation of C and Fortran code now uses the optimization flag ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. Its effect is particularly evident on 64-bit builds.
This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Compilation now uses option ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old. This can be overridden when building from the sources: see the ‘EOPTS’ macro defined in file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Compilation now uses option ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve
performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which
are several years old.
The 32-bit default build now requires a CPU supporting SSE2 (a Pentium 4 from 2001, AMD Opteron or Athlon 64 from 2003, or later): R can be built from the sources without this requirement: see file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Note that these changes will result in different results on some floating-point calculations (since they affect when extended-precision registers are used): in general they will bring 32-bit Windows closer to results from other platforms (including 64-bit Windows).
Compilation now uses option ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old.
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is actually used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias = "cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
Compilation now uses option ‘-mtune=core2’: this will improve performance a few percent on recent CPUs at the expense of those which are several years old.
The 32-bit default build now requires a CPU supporting SSE2 (a Pentium 4 from 2001, AMD Opteron or Athlon 64 from 2003, or later): R can be built from the sources without this requirement: see file ‘MkRules.dist’.
Note that these changes will result in different results on some floating-point calculations (since they affect when extended-precision registers are used): in general they will bring 32-bit Windows closer to results from other platforms (including 64-bit Windows).
The windows() screen device would sometimes fail to plot (visibly) points with ‘pch="."’. PR#14583
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write files in the wrong directory if closed during shutdown. The order has been reversed.
Saving to PDF from the menu of a ‘windows()’ device used defaults for
‘family’, ‘fg’ and ‘bg’ from ‘ps.options()’ rather than ‘pdf.options()’
(but the factory-fresh defaults were the same).
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before
closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing
the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write
files in the wrong directory. The order has been reversed.
Saving to PDF from the menu of a ‘windows()’ device used defaults for ‘family’, ‘fg’ and ‘bg’ from ‘ps.options()’ rather than ‘pdf.options()’ (but the factory-fresh defaults were the same).
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write files in the wrong directory in closed during shutdown. The order has been reversed.
‘system()’ and related functions sometimes failed when run in ‘Rgui’.
The ‘Update packages ...’ menu item now runs ‘update.packages(ask="graphics", checkBuilt=TRUE’.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
These are not compiled in by default: see the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.
The windows() screen device would sometimes fail to plot points with ‘pch="."’. PR#14583
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and
the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in
‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and
‘win.graph()’).
This effectively gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This effectively gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled. For those not using ClearType, ‘windows.options(antialias="cleartype")’ will make this the default, and it will probably give more legible plots.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
There is a new ‘antialias’ argument to ‘windows()’, ‘win.print()’ and the bitmap devices. This is an option that can be set in ‘windows.options()’ to set the default for ‘windows()’ (and ‘win.graph()’).
This effectively gives a hint to the Windows plotting system. Whether anti-aliasing is used principally depends on the OS settings: this argument should at least be able to turn it off. The default behaviour (unchanged from before) is that Windows will use anti-aliasing for screen devices (and bitmap devices, as they plot on a hidden screen) if ClearType has been enabled.
The argument can also be used for the cairographics-based versions of the bitmap devices.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’, and devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are now available on Windows.
[Experimental and not compiled in by default.
To experiment with them, follow the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.]
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument. If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4. If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based devices.
This will generally be a Windows font name such as ‘"Lucida Bright"’ or one of the device-independent names (‘"sans"’, ‘"serif"’ and ‘"mono"’). Outside Western Europe you may need to select a family that better supports your locale such as ‘"Arial MS Unicode"’ or one specific to Chinese/Korean/Thai ....
‘Rzlib.dll’ (sometimes used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
All the Windows-specific graphics devices now have a ‘family’ argument. If non-empty this specifies an initial family to be used for fonts 1-4. If empty the fonts specified in the ‘Rdevga’ configuration file are used for the Windows GDI devices and ‘"sans"’ for cairographics-based devices.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’. New devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are available.
[Experimental and not compiled in by default.
To experiment with them, follow the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.]
The ‘windows()’ family of devices now supports() per-pixel alpha for
raster images.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the new ‘type’ argument of the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’. New devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are available.
[Experimental and not compiled in by default (and not all devices yet work correctly).
To experiment with them, follow the instructions in the ‘R Installation and Administration Manual’.]
The ‘windows()’ family of devices now supports() per-pixel alpha for raster images.
Shutting down the R session cleaned up the temporary directory before closing all graphics devices. On Windows this necessitated changing the working directory, so some devices (e.g. ‘tiff()’) could write files in the wrong directory. The order has been reversed.
‘file.info()’ now accepts ‘file’ names with trailing directory separators, even though such names are invalid on Windows.
There is support for cairographics-based devices using the same code as on Unix-alikes. This can be selected by the ‘type’ option to the bitmap devices ‘bmp()’, ‘jpeg()’, ‘png()’ and ‘tiff()’. New devices ‘svg()’, ‘cairo_pdf()’ and ‘cairo_ps()’ are available.
[Experimental and not compiled in by default (and not all devices work correctly).
To make use of them, ‘cd src/library/grDevices/cairo’ and read the instructions in ‘Makefile.win’.]
‘file.info()’ now accepts ‘file’ names with trailing directory separators.
The ‘windows()’ family of devices now supports() per-pixel alpha for raster images.
‘Rzlib.dll’ (used in packages _via_ ‘$(ZLIB_LIBS)’) does not include the buggy gzio interface from zlib 1.2.5.
‘file.info()’ now accepts ‘file’ names with trailing directory separators: those are not valid on Windows but R has some ignorant users.
Saving to PDF from the menu of a ‘windows()’ device used defaults for ‘family’, ‘fg’ and ‘bg’ from ‘ps.options()’ rather than ‘pdf.options()’ (but the factory-fresh defaults were the same).
‘R CMD build’ no longer attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows, because Windows (unlike POSIX-compliant OSes) stops read-only files being deleted in version-control directories.
The ‘yLineBias’ of the ‘windows()’ family of devices has been changed from 0.1 to 0.2: this changes slightly the vertical positioning of text (including axis annotations). This can be overridden by setting the new ‘"ylbias"’ graphical parameter.
There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
It is the intention to move to such a toolchain when they become mature enough.
‘shell.exec()’ now interprets files relative to the current working directory (rather than ‘R_HOME’).
‘R CMD build’ no longer attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows, because Windows (unlike POSIX-complant OSes) stops read-only files being deleted in version-control directories.
‘shell.exec()’ now interprets files relative to the current working directory.
Launching the PDF manuals from the Rgui menus did not work on some versions of Windows.
‘R CMD build’ once again attempts to preserve file permissions on Windows.
The sources now work with ‘libpng-1.5.1’, ‘jpegsrc.v8c’ (which are used in the CRAN builds) and ‘tiff-4.0.0beta6’ (CRAN builds use 3.9.1). It is possible that they no longer work with older versions than ‘libpng-1.4.5’.
There is support for ‘multilib’ toolchains which use options ‘--m32’ or ‘--m64’ to select the architecture; set the appropriate macros in ‘MkRules.local’.
‘Rgui’ has a new menu item for the PDF ‘Sweave User Manual’.
The sources now work with ‘libpng-1.5.1’, ‘ jpegsrc.v8c’ (which are used in the CRAN builds) and ‘tiff-4.0.0beta6’ (CRAN builds use 3.9.1). It is possible that they no longer work with older versions than ‘libpng-1.4.5’.
A few more file operations will now work with >2GB files.
The graphical dialog version of ‘select.list()’ could cause later dialogs to fail if Windows events were not processed between the calls.
The versions of ‘R.exe’ in ‘R_HOME/bin/i386,x64/bin’ now support options such as ‘R --vanilla CMD’: there is no comparable interface for ‘Rcmd.exe’.
Windows 2000 is no longer supported. (It went end-of-life in July 2010.)
‘file.exists()’ and ‘unlink()’ have more support for files > 2GB.
Building badly-written vignettes which used the default device
(‘pdf(file = "Rplots.pdf")’ could leave the device open and hence the
file ‘Rplots.pdf’ could not be removed on Windows: all devices are now
closed.
In some circumstances the caret (cursor) could be positioned
incorrectly. (PR#14460)
When loading ‘Rconsole’ from disk, a spurious warning message was
sometimes shown.
In R 2.12.1, ‘system()’ sometimes passed an empty input stream to the
new process rather than allowing user input.
The internal method for ‘untar()’ does a better job of unravelling
symbolic links in the tarball (but still with many limitations).
Building badly-written vignettes which used the default device (‘pdf(file = "Rplots.pdf")’ could leave the device open and hence the file ‘Rplots.pdf’ could not be removed on Windows: all devices are now closed.
In some circumstances the caret (cursor) could be positioned incorrectly. (PR#14460)
When loading ‘Rconsole’ from disk, a spurious warning message was sometimes shown.
In R 2.12.1, ‘system()’ sometimes passed an empty input stream to the new process rather than allowing user input.
The internal method for ‘untar()’ does a better job of unravelling symbolic links in the tarball (but still with many limitations).
Building badly-written vignettes which used the default device (‘pdf(file = "Rplots.pdf")’ could leave the device open and hence the file ‘Rplots.pdf’ could not be removed on Windows: all devices are now closed.
Bug fixes for drawing raster objects on ‘windows()’. The symptom was the occasional raster image not being drawn, especially when drawing multiple raster images in a single expression. Thanks to Michael Sumner for report and testing.
Bug fix for drawing raster objects on ‘windows()’. The symptom was the occasional raster image not being drawn, especially when drawing multiple raster images in a single expression.
Workaround for the incorrect values given by Windows' ‘casinh’ function on the branch cuts.
Work around for the incorrect values given by Windows' ‘casinh’ function on the branch cuts.
zip.unpack() is deprecated: use ‘unzip()’.
The sources now work with ‘libpng-1.5.1’, ‘jpegsrc.v8c’ and ‘tiff-4.0.0beta6’. It is possible that they no longer work with older versions than ‘libpng-1.4.5’.
The internal method for ‘untar()’ does a better job of unravelling symbolic links in the tarball (but still with many limitations).
If ‘options("install.lock")’ is set to ‘TRUE’, binary package installs are protected against failure similar to the way source package installs are protected.
In R 2.12.1, ‘system()’ sometimes passed an empty input stream to the new process rather than allowing user input.
In some circumstances the caret (cursor) could be positioned incorrectly. (PR#14460)
When loading ‘Rconsole’ from disk, a spurious warning message was sometimes shown.
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ with output redirected to a character vector
now give a warning if the command returns a non-zero error code. (This
is what a Unix-alike does as from R 2.12.0.)
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to
stdout and stderr as often as they used to, and more cases of
‘system2()’ are implemented.
‘stdin’ is now flushed after echoing the input line.
The internal implementation of ‘tar()’ (package ‘utils’) is now
supported on Windows.
The MSI installer is now made by an R script, and there is now support
for 64-bit builds. (Unlike the Inno Setup installer, there are
separate MSI installers for 32- and 64-bit Windows.)
It is now built using ‘WiX 3.x’ rather than ‘WiX 2.0’. (As a result it is about 25% smaller.)
Some warning/error messages from ‘dyn.load()’ could be masked in ‘Rgui’
on Windows 7, as that OS can return messages containing carriage
returns and ‘Rgui’ does not support overwriting.
Filenames could not be specified using backslashes in ‘Sweave()’.
In R 2.12.0, ‘system(intern = TRUE)’ captured ‘stderr’ on ‘Rterm’ when
it was documented to only do so on ‘Rgui’.
‘Rgui’ in R 2.12.0 (only) did not always handle lines containing
carriage returns (‘\r’) correctly: sometimes random characters where
shown.
Since carriage returns have been supported in ‘Rgui’, the cursor positioning after outputting a line containing a carriage return had been unreliable.
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ with output redirected to a character vector now give a warning if the command returns a non-zero error code. (This is what a Unix-alike does as from R 2.12.0.)
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to stdout and stderr as often as they used to, and more cases of ‘system2()’ are implemented.
‘stdout’ is now flushed after echoing the input line.
The internal implementation of ‘tar()’ (package ‘utils’) is now supported on Windows.
The MSI installer is now made by an R script, and there is now support for 64-bit builds. (Unlike the Inno Setup installer, there are separate MSI installers for 32- and 64-bit Windows.)
It is now built using ‘WiX 3.x’ rather than ‘WiX 2.0’. (As a result it is about 25% smaller.)
Some warning/error messages from ‘dyn.load()’ could be masked in ‘Rgui’ on Windows 7, as that OS can return messages containing carriage returns and ‘Rgui’ does not support overwriting.
Filenames could not be specified using backslashes in ‘Sweave()’.
In R 2.12.0, ‘system(intern = TRUE)’ captured ‘stderr’ on ‘Rterm’ when it was documented to only do so on ‘Rgui’.
‘Rgui’ in R 2.12.0 (only) did not always handle lines containing carriage returns (‘\r’) correctly: sometimes random characters where shown.
Since carriage returns have been supported in ‘Rgui’, the cursor positioning after outputting a line containing a carriage return had been unreliable.
The internal implementation of ‘tar()’ (package ‘utils’) is now supported on Windows.
‘Rgui’ in R 2.12.0 (only) did not always handle lines containing carriage returns (‘\r’) correctly: sometimes random characters where shown.
Since carriage returns have been supported in ‘Rgui’, the cursor positioning after outputting a line containing a carriage return had been unreliable.
In R 2.12.0, ‘system(intern = TRUE)’ captured ‘stderr’ on ‘Rterm’ when it was documented to only do so on ‘Rgui’.
‘stdin’ is now flushed after echoing the input line.
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to stdout and stderr as often as they used to, and more cases of ‘system2()’ are implemented.
The defaults for ‘options("browser")’ and ‘options("pdfviewer")’ are now set from environment variables ‘R_BROWSER’ and ‘R_PDFVIEWER’ respectively (as on a Unix-alike). A value of ‘"false"’ suppresses display (even if there is no ‘false.exe’ present on the path).
The MSI installer is now made by an R script, and there is now support for 64-bit builds. (Unlike the Inno Setup installer, there are separate MSI installers for 32- and 64-bit Windows.)
It is now built using ‘WiX 3.x’ rather than ‘WiX 2.0’. (As a result it is about 25% smaller.)
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to
stdout and stderr as often as they used to.
The MSI installer is now built with ‘WiX 3.0’ (rather than ‘WiX 2.0’.
[It does not currently create shortcuts and Registry entries.]
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to stdout and stderr as often as they used to.
The MSI installer is now made by an R script, and there is now support for 64-bit builds.
It is now built using ‘WiX 3.0’ rather than ‘WiX 2.0’. (As a result it is about 25% smaller.)
‘setWinProgressBar()’ did not check the type of its ‘'title'’ and ‘'label'’ arguments and might have crashed if they were mis-specified. It now does, thanks to a report by Greg Snow.
The MSI installer is now built with ‘WiX 3.0’ (rather than ‘WiX 2.0’. [It does not currently create shortcuts and Registry entries.]
The MSI installer is now made by an R script, and there is now support for 64-bit builds.
Some warning/error messages from ‘dyn.load()’ could be masked in ‘Rgui’ on Windows 7, as that OS can return messages containing carriage returns and ‘Rgui’ does not support overwriting.
Filenames could not be specified using backslashes in ‘Sweave()’.
There is support for ‘libjpeg-turbo’ _via_ setting ‘JPEGDIR’ to that value in ‘MkRules.local’.
Support for ‘jpeg-6b’ has been removed.
‘win_iconv’ has been updated: this version has a change in the behaviour with BOMs on UTF-16 and UTF-32 files - it removes BOMs when reading and adds them when writing. (This is consistent with Microsoft applications, but Unix versions of ‘iconv’ usually ignore them.)
Support for repository type ‘win64.binary’ (used for 64-bit Windows binaries for R 2.11.x only) has been removed.
Running R always sets the environment variable ‘R_ARCH’ (as it does on a Unix-alike from the shell-script front-end).
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output from the command to stdout and stderr as often as they used to.
The 32- and 64-bit distributions have been merged:
There is a combined installer (called ‘R-<version>-win.exe’). When used under 32-bit Windows this works as before and installs 32-bit R. When used under 64-bit Windows there are options to install either or both of 32- and 64-bit R: the default is to install both.
The default package type is ‘"win.binary"’ on both 32- and 64-bit builds: a single repository contains binary packages for both architectures. This is in place for CRAN, CRAN extras and BioC: ‘type = "win64.binary"’ can still be used for any repositories which follow the R 2.11.x convention. With the default filters (see ‘?available.packages’) packages will only be offered if they are available for the current architecture.
The default personal library, e.g. ‘~/R/win-library/2.12’ is now the same for both 32- and 64-bit R.
The recommended 64-bit toolchain has been changed to one that does not add leading underscores. See <URL: http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/> or <URL: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/Rtools/>. Any static or import libraries for external software used in installing packages will need to be re-compiled for this toolchain, but the use of DLLs is unaffected.
‘system()’ (and hence ‘shell()’) did not always set the standard file handles properly, so some programs would not run.
‘setWinProgressBar()’ did not check the type of its ‘'title'’ and ‘'label'’ arguments and might have crashed if they were mis-specified. It checks does, thanks to a report by Greg Snow.
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ with output redirected to a character vector now give a warning if the command returns a non-zero error code. (This is what a Unix-alike does as from R 2.12.0.)
‘system()’ and ‘system2()’ no longer discard output to standard error as often as they used to.
Running R always set the environment variable ‘R_ARCH’ (as it does on a Unix-alike from the shell-script front-end).
The installers no longer put an ‘Uninstall’ item on the start menu (to conform to current Microsoft UI guidelines).
Support for repository type ‘win64.binary’ (used for 64-bit Windows binaries for R 2.11.x) has been removed.
The 32- and 64-bit distributions have been merged:
There is a combined installer (called ‘R-<version>-win.exe’). When used under 32-bit Windows this works as before and installs 32-bit R. When used under 64-bit Windows there are options to install either or both of 32- and 64-bit R: the default is to install both.
The default package type is ‘"win.binary"’ on both 32- and 64-bit builds: a single repository contains binary packages for both architectures. This is in place for CRAN, CRANextras and BioC: ‘type = "win64.binary"’ can still be used for any repositories which follow the R 2.11.x convention. With the default filters (see ‘?available.packages’) packages will only be offered if they are available for the current architecture.
The default personal library, e.g. ‘~/R/win-library/2.12’ is now the same for both 32- and 64-bit R.
The recommended 64-bit toolchain has been changed to one that does not add leading underscores. See <URL: http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/> or <URL: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/Rtools/>. Any static or import libraries for external software used in installing packages will need to be re-compiled for this toolchain, but the use of DLLs is unaffected.
‘Rscript -e’ and similar use a temporary file, and now work harder to ensure that filename is not the same as some other simultaneous R process.
‘win_iconv’ has been updated: this version has a change in the behaviour with BOMs on UTF-16 and UTF-32 files - it removes BOMs when reading and adds them when writing. (This is consistent with MicroSoft applications, but Unix versions of ‘iconv’ usually ignore them.)
‘system(intern = FALSE)’ now returns ‘127’ (the same as Unix-alikes) rather than ‘-1’ if the command cannot be run, and (like Unix-alikes) no longer gives a warning.
‘R.exe’ when used in place of ‘Rterm.exe’ set the environment variables set by ‘R CMD’. Conversely, ‘R CMD BATCH’ did not.
‘memory.limit()’ did not allow sizes greater than 4095 on 64 bit builds. (PR#14372)
‘R.exe’ when used in place of ‘Rterm.exe’ used to set the environment variables set by ‘R CMD’. Conversely, ‘R CMD BATCH’ did not.
‘memory.limit()’ did not allow sizes greater than 4095 even on 64 bit builds. (PR#14372)
‘system(intern = FALSE)’ now return ‘127’ (the same as Unix-alikes) rather than ‘-1’ if the command cannot be run, and (like Unix-alikes) no longer gives a warning.
‘system(intern=TRUE)’ often returned ‘0’ rather than an error status if the command could not be found, if run from ‘Rterm’ or from ‘Rgui’ with ‘show.output.on.console = FALSE’.
A fix intended for Mac OS X was incorrectly applied to Windows, so 'iconv(x, from, "")' in a C locale was interpreted as requesting translation to UTF-8.
'readClipboard()' could cause a segfault with certain clipboard data.
The recommended toolchain has been changed to one that does not add leading underscores. See <URL: http://www.murdoch-sutherland.com/Rtools/> or <URL: http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/Rtools/>. Any static or import libraries for external software used in installing packages will need to be re-compiled for this toolchain, but the use of DLLs is unaffected.
The 32- and 64-bit distributions have been merged:
There is a combined installer (called 'R-<version>-win.exe'). When used under 32-bit Windows this works as before and installs 32-bit R. When used under 64-bit Windows there are options to install either or both of 32- and 64-bit R: the default is to install both.
The default package type is '"win.binary"' on both 32- and 64-bit builds: a single repository contains binary packages for both architectures. This is in place for CRAN, CRANextras and BioC: 'type = "win64.binary"' can still be used for any repositories which follow the R 2.11.x convention. With the default filters (see '?available.packages') packages will only be offered if they are available for the current architecture.
'serialize()' to a raw vector works around the dismal performance of Windows' memory manager by allocating much larger chunks of memory less frequently.