• The graphical dialog version of ‘select.list()’ could cause later dialogs to fail if Windows events were not processed between the calls.

• 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.

2.12.1 patched BUG FIXES (Windows)

• 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).

2.12.2 NEW FEATURES (Windows)

• 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.

2.12.2 BUG FIXES (Windows)

• 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• The internal method for ‘untar()’ does a better job of unravelling symbolic links in the tarball (but still with many limitations).

• 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.

2.12.0 patched INSTALLATION (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.)

2.12.0 patched BUG FIXES (Windows)

• 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.

2.12.1 NEW FEATURES (Windows)

• ‘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.

2.12.1 INSTALLATION (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.)

2.12.1 BUG FIXES (Windows)

• 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 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.

2.12.0 patched INSTALLATION (Windows)

• 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.)

2.12.0 64-bit NEWS (Windows)

• 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.

2.10.1 patched BUG FIXES (Windows)

• ‘system()’ (and hence ‘shell()’) did not always set the standard file handles properly, so some programs would not run.

• 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()’.

• ‘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(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.

2.12.0 BUG FIXES (Windows)

• ‘R.exe’ when used in place of ‘Rterm.exe’ set the environment variables set by ‘R CMD’. Conversely, ‘R CMD BATCH’ did not.

2.11.1 patched BUG FIXES (Windows)

• ‘memory.limit()’ did not allow sizes greater than 4095 on 64 bit builds. (PR#14372)

• 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.

• ‘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.