How to save version R of version 2.x and automatically download packages using install.packages () by package name?

Question

My operational setup relies heavily on the rcom library, which is not yet available for R 3.x (due to licensing issues).

I am glad to continue to use R v. 2.15.3, but install.packages no longer extracts new packages.

Is there a way to make old R boot packages on request with something like install.packages("MASS") ?

Answer 1

OK, this is a backup solution:

We can always download (windows) old packages from this place on the CRAN website and unzip the ZIP files to C:\Program Files\R\R-2.15.3\library or the equivalent. But it would be great to use some form of a simple R command for this.

You can also try using different mirrors, since mirrors are not equivalent in volume of archives.

At least that's how I do this (virtual) 32-bit Windows XP.