Keywords: miniCRAN, Agricultural Sciences, Statistics
Webpages:
https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=miniCRAN,
http://rstats4ag.org/ R has evolved over time and currently consists of more than 10,000 packages. Virtually any aspects of statistical methods e.g., in the agricultural sciences, are readily available. Packages can be accessed anywhere, also in countries with few resources for purchasing commercial programmes (e.g., SAS, SPSS, Matlab). However, when in regions where seamless running internet is an exception rather than the rule we have problems. Introducing
R and relevant packages to new students should not begin with struggling downloading the packages. In training and instruction situations, the package
miniCRAN can help us maintain a private mirror of a subset of packages that are relevant to distribute among students irrespective of the functioning of the internet. In addition, the package
miniCRAN makes it possible to make a dependency tree for a given set of packages. An important facility is the capability to download older version packages from the CRAN archives. However, dependencies for old package versions cannot be determined automatically and the end user must specify.
