In order to access CRAN packages from within R on OSX I've been using
Sys.setenv(http_proxy="http://blah_blah:1234/")
as the first command in the R GUI for a while, but would really like to set this proxy automatically.
I've tried unsuccessfully to get the same command to work in a .Rprofile file in ~/
I've also tried http_proxy="http://blah_blah:1234/", but this fails too.
The error I get when I try to view packages is a drop-down window that says:
Fetching Package List Failed
Please consult R Console output for details
The GUI then gives:
Error in read.dcf(file = tmpf) : Line starting '<head> ...' is malformed!
The .Rprofile file itself seems to be loading (checked using cat("my profile works\n"))
Couldn't you just use .First ?
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/R-intro.html#Customizing-the-environment