| Plugins {Rcmdr} | R Documentation |
Plug-ins are R packages that extend the R Command interface.
An R Commander plug-in is an ordinary R package that (1) provides extensions to
the R Commander menus is a file named menus.txt located in the package's
etc directory; (2) provides call-back functions required by these menus;
and (3) in an Models: field in the
package's DESCRIPTION file, augments the list of model objects
recognized by the R Commander. The menus provided by a plug-in package are
merged with the standard Commander menus. It is also possible to remove menus
and menu items from the standard Commander menu file or from the files of
plug-ins installed before the current one.
Plug-in packages given in the R Commander plugins option
(see Commander) are automatically loaded when the Commander
starts up. Plug-in packages may also be loaded via the Commander
Tools -> Load Rcmdr plug-in(s) menu; a restart of the Commander is
required to install the new menus. Finally, loading a plug-in package when
the Rcmdr is not loaded will load the Rcmdr and activate the
plug-in.
An illustrative R Commander plug-in package, RcmdrPlugin.TeachingDemos, is available on CRAN.
For more details, see my (slightly out-of-date) article on “Extending the Rcmdr by Plug-in Packages” in the December 2007 issue of R News <http://www.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2007-3.pdf>.