Starting with R 4.0.0 (released April 2020), R for Windows uses a toolchain bundle called rtools40.
Rtools is a collection of software for building packages for R under Microsoft Windows, or for building R itself (version 1.9.0 or later). The original collection was put together by Prof. Brian Ripley; it is currently being maintained by Duncan Murdoch. A collection of tools necessary for building R packages in Windows. Select the.exe download link from the table that corresponds to your version of R Note: If you're not sure what version of R you have, open or restart R and it's the first thing that comes up in the console. R-Studio Data Recovery is a fantastic option for recovering lost information. It’s easy to use and works just as intended. Should you download it? If you feel you might have something important hiding in your hard drive, download this program and take a look. 3uTools supports to back up and restore, flash and jailbreak, manage files (photos, videos, contacts.), it provides one-click download for iOS users with genuine iOS apps, popular games, free ringtones and HD wallpapers.
This version of Rtools includes gcc 8.3.0, and introduces a new build system based on msys2, which makes easier to build and maintain R itself as well as the system libraries needed by R packages on Windows. Recent builds of rtools40 also contain an additional gcc-10 ucrt toolchain for testing R packages and system libraries with the experimental ucrt builds of R-devel. For more information about these topics, follow the links at the bottom of this document.
The current version of Rtools is maintained by Jeroen Ooms. Older editions were put together by Prof. Brian Ripley and Duncan Murdoch. The best place for reporting bugs is via the r-windows organization on GitHub.
Installing Rtools40
Note that rtools40 is only needed build R packages with C/C++/Fortran code from source. By default, R for Windows installs the precompiled “binary packages” from CRAN, for which you do not need rtools!
To use rtools40, download the installer from CRAN:
- On Windows 64-bit: rtools40v2-x86_64.exe (recommended: includes i386, x64, and x64-ucrt compilers)
- On Windows 32-bit: rtools40-i686.exe (i386 compilers only)
Note for RStudio users: please check you are using a recent version of RStudio (at least 1.2.5042) to work with rtools40.
Putting Rtools on the PATH
After installation is complete, you need to perform one more step to be able to compile R packages: you need to put the location of the Rtools make utilities (bash, make, etc) on the PATH. The easiest way to do so is create a text file .Renviron in your Documents folder which contains the following line:
You can do this with a text editor, or from R like so (note that in R code you need to escape backslashes):
Now restart R, and verify that make can be found, which should show the path to your Rtools installation.
Download R Tools For R Studio
If this works, you can try to install an R package from source:
Download R Tools For Windows 10
If this succeeds, you’re good to go! See the links below to learn more about rtools40 and the Windows build infrastructure.
Further Documentation
Download R Tools Mac
More documentation about using rtools40 for R users and package authors:
- Using pacman: the new rtools package manager to build and install C/C++ system libraries.
- Installing R packages: Some older R packages that need extra help to compile.
- Testing packages with ucrt64: Instructions for building and testing using the experimental UCRT toolchains.
- FAQ: Common questions about Rtools40 and R on Windows.
Advanced information about building R base and building system libraries:
- r-base: Scripts for building R for Windows using rtools40.
- rtools-packages: Toolchains and static libraries for rtools40 (GCC 8+)
- rtools-backports: Backported C/C++ libraries for the gcc-4.9.3 legacy toolchain (for R 3.3 - 3.6)
- rtools-installer: Builds the rtools40 installer bundle.