Question

I’ve started to use R a little while ago and am not sure how often to update the installed packages (at this time, I’m using mostly ggplot2 and rattle). One one hand it’s the typical geek impulse to have the latest version 🙂 On the other, updates can break functionality and, as an R beginner, I don’t want to waste time looking into package incompatibilities and reinstalling libraries, it’s almost certain I wouldn’t notice any difference with an improved package.

With other applications I have a sense developed from experience on how often to upgrade, how much to wait between the release of an upgrade and installing it and so on. But I’m in the dark with regards to R.

And to be clear: I’m not talking about R itself, but its libraries.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here is my philosophy: the naïve user never updates. The sophisticated user always updates. The power user updates often, but carefully.

Mindless updating is not always beneficial. Bugs work their way in updated versions of R libraries (or R itself!), and you could break your existing code by updating without reading the change log or commit history. For example, R 2.11 broke lme4 on OS X… it pays to carefully update and run demos of packages between releases. It really sucks to update to a new library or R release and realize something broke when you have a deadline.