Microsoft R Open (MRO), Microsoft's enhanced distribution of open source R, has been upgraded to version 3.4.0 and is now available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This update upgrades the R language engine to R 3.4.0, reduces the size of the installer image, and updates the bundled packages.
R 3.4.0 (upon which MRO 3.4.0 is based) is a major update to the R language, with many fixes and improvements. Most notably, R 3.4.0 introduces a just-in-time (JIT) compiler to improve performance of the scripts and functions that you write. There have been a few minor tweaks to the language itself, but in general functions and packages written for R 3.3.x should work the same in R 3.4.0. As usual, MRO points to a fixed CRAN snapshot from May 1 2017, but you can use the built-in checkpoint package to access packages from an earlier date (for compatibility) or a later date (to access new and updated packages).
MRO is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux (Ubuntu, RedHat/CentOS, and SUSE). MRO 3.4.0 is 100% compatible with R 3.4.0, and you can use it with any of the 10,000+ packages available on CRAN. Here are some highlights of new packages released since the last MRO update.
We hope you find Microsoft R Open useful, and if you have any comments or questions please visit the Microsoft R Open forum. You can follow the development of Microsoft R Open at the MRO Github repository. To download Microsoft R Open, simply follow the link below.