Install R Packages from remote or local repositories, including GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Bioconductor
Download and install R packages stored in GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket,
Bioconductor, or plain subversion or git repositories. This package is a
lightweight replacement of the install_*
functions in
devtools
. Indeed most of the code
was copied over from devtools
.
- Installers:
- Install packages with their dependencies.
- Install from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket.
- Install from git and subversion repositories.
- Install from local files or URLs.
- Install the dependencies of a local package tree.
- Install specific package versions from CRAN.
- Supports Bioconductor packages.
- Supports the
Remotes
field inDESCRIPTION
. See more in the dependencies vignette. - Supports the
Additional_repositories
field inDESCRIPTION
. - Can install itself from GitHub (see below).
- Does not depend on other R packages.
- Does not contain compiled code, so no compiler is needed.
- Does not need any external software (for most of the functionality at least).
Install the released version of remotes from CRAN:
install.packages("remotes")
Note that most of the examples here use GitHub. See below for other supported repository types.
To install the latest version of a package in the default branch from
GitHub, you can use the user/repo
form. Note that user
can also be
an organization:
remotes::install_github("r-lib/conflicted")
If the R package is inside a subdirectory of the root directory, then give this subdirectory as well:
# build = FALSE because of some specificities of XGBoost package
install_github("dmlc/xgboost/R-package", build = FALSE)
To install a certain branch or commit or tag, append it to the repo
name, after an @
:
remotes::install_github("gaborcsardi/[email protected]")
To install the latest release, append @*release
to the repo name:
remotes::install_github("gaborcsardi/pkgconfig@*release")
To install a pull request, append #
and the id (an integer number) of
the pull request to the repo name:
remotes::install_github("r-lib/pkgconfig#7")
Dependencies are automatically installed from CRAN. By default, outdated dependencies are automatically upgraded. In interactive sessions you can select a subset of the dependencies to upgrade.
It is also possible to install dependencies from GitHub or other
supported repositories. For this you need to add a Remotes
field to
the DESCRIPTION
file. Its format is:
Remotes: [remote::]repo_spec, [remote::]repo_spec, ...
where repo_spec
is any repository specification the corresponding
install_()
function can handle. If remote::
is missing, github::
is assumed. Other possible values: gitlab::
,bitbucket::
, git::
,
local::
, svn::
, url::
, version::
, cran::
, bioc::
.
See more about the Remotes
field in this
vignette.
remotes supports the Additional_repositories
field in DESCRIPTION
.
This is a way to specify dependencies from non-CRAN package
repositories. See the Writing R
extensions
manual for details.
Bioconductor packages are automatically detected and their dependencies are installed from Bioconductor.
- GitHub repositories via
install_github
. - Bitbucket repositories via
install_bitbucket
. - Generic git repositories via
install_git
. They need either a system git installation, or the git2r R package. - Local directories or package archive files via
install_local
. - Remote package archive files via
install_url
. - Packages in subversion repositories via
install_svn
. They need a system subversion installation. - Specific package versions from CRAN or other CRAN-like repositories
via
install_version
. This includes outdated and archived packages as well. - All dependencies of a package in a local directory via
install_deps
.
- For R older than 3.2, the curl package is required as remotes falls
back to
curl::curl_download
in that case - For R newer than 3.3, default
download.file()
method is used. (method = "auto"
) - For in between versions,
method = "wininet"
is used on windows OSmethod = "libcurl"
is used on other OS, if available.
See help("download.file")
for information on these methods and for
setting proxies if needed.
remotes will use the curl, git2r and pkgbuild packages if they are installed to provide faster implementations for some aspects of the install process. However if you are using remotes to install or update these packages (or their reverse dependencies) using them during installation may fail (particularly on Windows).
If you set the environment variable R_REMOTES_STANDALONE="true"
(e.g.
in R Sys.setenv(R_REMOTES_STANDALONE="true")
) you can force remotes to
operate in standalone mode and use only its internal R implementations.
This will allow successful installation of these packages.
remotes uses the following standard R options, see ?options
for their
details:
-
download.file.method
for the default download method. See?download.file
. -
pkgType
for the package type (source or binary, see manual) to install, download or look up dependencies for. -
repos
for the locations of the userβs standard CRAN(-like) repositories.
It also uses some remotes specific options:
-
BioC_git
for the URL of the default Bioconductor git mirror. -
BioC_mirror
for the URL of the Bioconductor mirror. -
unzip
for the path of the externalunzip
program.
-
The
BITBUCKET_USER
andBITBUCKET_PASSWORD
environment variables are used for the default Bitbucket user name and password, ininstall_bitbucket()
-
The
GITHUB_PAT
environment variable is used as the default GitHub personal access token for all GitHub API queries. -
The
R_BIOC_MIRROR
environment variable can be used to specify an alternative Bioconductor mirror. (TheBioC_mirror
option takes precedence over this.) -
The
R_BIOC_VERSION
environment variable can be used to force a Bioconductor version. -
The
R_REMOTES_UPGRADE
environment variable can be used to set a default preferred value for theupgrade =
argument accepted by the variousinstall_*()
functions. For example, you can setR_REMOTES_UPGRADE="always"
to upgrade dependent packages without asking the user. -
Setting
R_REMOTES_STANDALONE="true"
forces remotes to work in standalone mode and avoid loading its optional dependencies (curl, git2 and pkgbuild currently. See βStandalone modeβ above. -
Setting
R_REMOTES_NO_ERRORS_FROM_WARNINGS="false"
will cause warning messages during calls toinstall.packages()
to become errors. Often warning messages are caused by dependencies failing to install.
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