Quick Way of Installing all your old R libraries on a New Device

I recently bought a new laptop and began installing essential software all over again, including R of course! And I wanted all the libraries that I had installed in my previous laptop. Instead of installing libraries one by one all over again, I did the following:

Step 1: Save a list of packages installed in your old computing device (from your old device).

installed <- as.data.frame(installed.packages()) write.csv(installed, 'installed_previously.csv')

This saves information on installed packages in a csv file named installed_previously.csv. Now copy or e-mail this file to your new device and access it from your working directory in R.

Step 2: Create a list of libraries from your old list that were not already installed when you freshly download R (from your new device).

installedPreviously <- read.csv('installed_previously.csv') baseR <- as.data.frame(installed.packages()) toInstall <- setdiff(installedPreviously, baseR)

We now have a list of libraries that were installed in your previous computer in addition to the R packages already installed when you download R. So you now go ahead and install these libraries.

Step 3: Download this list of libraries.

install.packages(toInstall)

That’s it. Save yourself the trouble installing packages one-by-one all over again.