user_data_dir: Return path to user data directories.

Description

user_data_dir returns full path to the user-specific data dir for this application. user_config_dir returns full path to the user-specific configuration directory for this application which returns the same path as user data directory in Windows and Mac but a different one for Unix.

Usage

user_data_dir(appname = NULL, appauthor = appname, version = NULL,
  roaming = FALSE, expand = TRUE, os = get_os())
user_config_dir(appname = NULL, appauthor = appname, version = NULL,
  roaming = TRUE, expand = TRUE, os = get_os())

Arguments

appname

is the name of application. If NULL, just the system directory is returned.

appauthor

(only required and used on Windows) is the name of the appauthor or distributing body for this application. Typically it is the owning company name. This falls back to appname.

version

is an optional version path element to append to the path. You might want to use this if you want multiple versions of your app to be able to run independently. If used, this would typically be "<major>.<minor>". Only applied when appname is not NULL.

roaming

(logical, default FALSE) can be set TRUE to use the Windows roaming appdata directory. That means that for users on a Windows network setup for roaming profiles, this user data will be sync'd on login. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766489(WS.10).aspx for a discussion of issues.

expand

If TRUE (the default) will expand the R_LIBS specifiers with their equivalents. See R_LIBS for list of all possibly specifiers.

Operating system whose conventions are used to construct the requested directory. Possible values are "win", "mac", "unix". If NULL (the default) then the convention of the current operating system (as determined by rappdirs:::get_os) will be used. This argument is unlikely to find much use outside package testing (see details section of user_data_dir).

Details

Typical user data directories are:

Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/<AppName>
Unix: ~/.local/share/<AppName>, in $XDG_DATA_HOME if defined
Win XP (not roaming): C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Data\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>
Win XP (roaming): C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Data\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>
Win 7 (not roaming): C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>
Win 7 (roaming): C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>

Unix also specifies a separate location for user configuration data in

Unix: ~/.config/<AppName>, in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME if defined

See for example http://ploum.net/184-cleaning-user-preferences-keeping-user-data/ or http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html for more information. Arguably plugins such as R packages should go into the user configuration directory and deleting this directory should return the application to a default settings.

The os parameter allows the calculation of directories based on a convention other than the current operating system. This feature is designed with package testing in mind and is not recommended for end users. One possible exception is that some users on "mac" might wish to use the "unix" XDG convention.

Examples

Run this code

# NOT RUN {
user_data_dir("rappdirs")
user_config_dir("rappdirs", version="%p-platform/%v")
user_config_dir("rappdirs", roaming=TRUE, os="win")
user_config_dir("rappdirs", roaming=FALSE, os="win")
user_config_dir("rappdirs", os="unix")
user_config_dir("rappdirs", os="mac")
# }
# NOT RUN {
# you could try to use functions to store R libraries in a standard user directory
# by using the following in your .Rprofile file
# but unfortunately if rappsdir package was stored in standard user directory then
# it won't be on R's search path any longer, so would need to be installed system-wide...
require("utils")
.libPaths(new=rappdirs::user_config_dir("R", version="%p-platform/%v"))
# }

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