Installing devtools

Installation

install.packages(c("devtools", "roxygen2", "knitr"))

If you are able to load the devtools package with

library(devtools)
has_devel()

and it returns TRUE, you’re all set. If it throws up an error, you will have to install or update xcode on a mac (It’s free from Apple. Find it on the mac app store). Please also open xcode, go to the Settings > Downloads and install the Command Line Tools. If you are on a PC you’ll have to install RTools (http://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/)

If you’re on Linux, then run:

apt-get install r-base-dev

Xcode is a large download (~2 gigs, ~ 1 hour to download) so please do that before tomorrow afternoon while on a fast connection.

Other packages will be easy to install during the session. But if you have time now, you can also get these out of the way.

Run:

library(devtools)
install_github("hadley/testthat")
install_github("hadley/assertthat")
install.packages("RCurl")
install.packages("RJSONIO")

Some advice from one of the participants (Magdalena S.)

For all that might end trouble shooting a combination of Xcode 5.0 and Mavericks (documented in the following thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19503995/error-when-with-xcode-5-0-and-rcpp-command-line-tools-are-installed/19505397#19505397), inclusion of ~/.R/Makevars file with the flags given in Romain's post (#2), should solve the issue. (XCode 5.0 does not include llvm-gcc anymore).

PS: If you're still using a version of R older than 3.0, please upgrade to the latest version.