Introduction
It is my pleasure to announce the release of version 0.7.0 of the RQDAassist package. A lot of work has gone into making it even easier for would-be users of RQDA to download and install that package along with its dependencies. In this update, I have focused on making R and Rtools more accessible to users, and as such, if one wants to properly install any of the two, the heavy lifting will be done for you.
Installation of R and Rtools
One of the current problems with installing RQDA is the introduction of UCRT in R 4.2. RQDA dependencies like RGtk2 and cairoDevice cannot be installed as the available binaries were not built with UCRT. They also cannot be built locally with the current version of their source files. So, for now, the use of RQDA will be restricted to R versions lower than 4.2.
RQDAassist was made to work on versions between 4.0 and 4.1, the latest of which is R 4.1.3. Prior to this update, if you were using R 4.2 you would have to separately download the compatible installer from CRAN (using this link), which would then have to be run to install R. Similarly if the user didn’t have Rtools40, that too had to be downloaded by the user from here and installed.
These operations can now be carried out almost automatically using the install function. It will detect if a compatible version of R or Rtools is not on the system, and if necessary, download these for the user to install. The user only needs to accept the Windows Smart Screen prompt to allow the software to be installed. If a previously downloaded copy of any of these is in the default download location, the download step is skipped and that local copy is installed.
Conclusion
RQDAassist now allows you to set up the R environment as well as Rtools which makes it easier to install RQDA. Visit the GitHub repository and post any issues that may be encountered and the package will be made to serve the community even better.
The Opportunist 