Bioequivalence and Bioavailability Forum

Dear all,

Due to retired/archived GTK2 packages (RGtk2, cairoDevice, gWidgets & gWidgetsRGtk2) since R v4.1.x, the installation of bear in all platforms was limited to R 4.1.x. The archived RGtk2 packages cannot run on ucrt64-based R (v4.2.x or above). Fortunately, since bear did not use cairoDevice package to output its graphics, users still can install it for R v4.2.x or above, including the current release (R v4.4,1). A while ago, Helmut suggested an installation method for bear running with R v4.2.x or above. To simplify the installation procedure, I wrote an R script (bw_preinst.r) to facilitate the process. Please note that the script currently was only applied for Windows 10/11 (I tested the script using R v4.4.1 under Virtualbox). I will go further for macOS later. I have tried it but it did not work so far. Sorry about this for macOS users. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Download/install the current release of R (v4.4.1) for Windows from CRAN; use 'default' for installation options;
   
2. Download/install RTools (v4.4.x) from CRAN; optional; not req. anymore if you are not a package developer using C/C++/Fortran; If not to install RTools, R will only install (or update) binary-format packages which should be fine for Windows;
   
3. Download bear (either the binary or source tarball) and bw_preinst.r from SourceForge (Please find the download link from my signature panel below); remember to put these two files under the R working directory for later use;
   
4. Run R as the system administrator and type update.packages(ask=F) to update all installed packages first; after update, type source("bw_preinst.r")[ENTER] to run the installation script; it will ask where to find bear package file (*.zip or *.tar.gz); after this step, close R and re-open R again as the regular user; type library(bear) [ENTER] & go()[ENTER].

That's it. Good luck.

Ps1. These four retired GTK2 packages (RGtk2, cairoDevice, gWidgets & gWidgetsRGtk2) were all compiled from the previous release (R 4.1.3) under Windows 10; Since they were all retired/archived, R will not upgrade these packages; They still work well.

Ps2. I could not put any web link for this post; otherwise, I got Error 406 .