Installing Software - R & RStudio

Installing R & RStudio

We will be setting up R & RStudio. Follow the instructions below, depending on your operating system, and the follow the library installation section.

Windows

  • Open a web browser and go to https://cran.r-project.org/.
  • Click Download R for Windows.
  • Choose the link install R for the first time.
  • Download the latest version (4.4.3 at time of writing) Download R-4.4.3 for Windows.
  • Run through the program installation process.
  • Once R is installed, we can install RStudio.
  • Go to https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/#download.
  • Download the latest version (2024.12.1+563 at the time of writing).
  • Under 2: Install RStudio click DOWNLOAD RSTUDIO DESKTOP FOR WINDOWS

  • Run through the program installation process.

Mac / OS X

  • Open a web browser and go to https://cran.r-project.org/.
  • Click Download R for macOS.
  • Download the latest version (4.4.3 at time of writing) R-4.4.3-arm64.pkg.
  • Run through the program installation process.
  • Once R is installed, we can install RStudio.
  • Go to https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/#download.
  • Click DOWNLOAD RSTUDIO DESKTOP FOR macOS
  • Download the latest version (2024.12.1+563 at the time of writing).
  • Run through the program installation process.

Libraries

R uses libraries to add features and different tools, such as GIS and spatial analysis. We need to install some libraries we will be using.

  • Open RStudio.
  • In the Console type in install.packages("sf").
  • Then load the library by running library(sf).
  • Check the output you get - red text does not always mean an error!
  • Repeat the process for the tmap package (install.packages("tmap") and then library(tmap)) and any other packages you need.

If you already have tmap installed, please upgrade it to the latest version. We will be using tmap v4 in the course. If you are not sure which version of tmap you are using, you can check by loading tmap and then running packageVersion("tmap").

If you get stuck, check out troubleshooting for some things to try.

Posit Cloud

If you can’t get R & RStudio installed on your computer, there is another option. You can use Posit Cloud, which runs RStudio in a web browser. You can get a free account which will be enough for a short course.

  • Go to posit.cloud.
  • Choose Sign Up
  • Select Learn more under the Cloud free plan
  • Choose Sign Up and fill out the form.
  • To get started, choose New Project and New RStudio Project. It will take a few seconds to load.

Troubleshooting

If you get stuck, check out troubleshooting for some things to try.

You are good to go!

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en. The latest version of this is available from https://nickbearman.github.io/installing-software/r-rstudio.