>> is someone aware of a way to easily install a package hosted on github without using devtools::install_github?
Personally, I love Dirk's[1] drat package. It allows authors to set up a personal CRAN-like system on their github pages. This means that the author of the package can decide when a (beta) release of a package is ready for use. I use it frequently, for example to allow people to confirm bug fixes prior to resubmitting to CRAN. >> Does anyone else ever need to avoid devtools? I love devtools, but avoid install_github. Be aware that installing from github does require some knowledge of the (directory) structure of the repo, which not necessarily is that of a package. For example, in my R-package repos, the package is always behind a pkg/[pkgname] folder. Besides that you can't be sure that a package downloaded from github actually builds (unless the author uses a build service), there are issues with documentation. install_github for example presumes that all Rd files are in the repo[2]. As these are nowadays mostly generated by Roxygen2, I feel such files do not belong there and since the creation of Roxygen I've left them out. Other authors might do the same. I also wonder about the use case of install_github in an R-course. The courses I teach never depend on software that are in an experimental stage (there's enough to teach on CRAN) >> Would something doing that be worth a package on CRAN? I agree with the dependency issue, so in that sense yes. But to make it robust, repo-owners probably need to adhere to either a pure R package structure or start using makefiles for package building. Best, Mark [1] When I say Dirk, I assume you know which one :-). [2] At least, this used to be true. I haven't used it in a while. Op do 3 dec. 2015 om 10:01 schreef Rainer M Krug <rai...@krugs.de>: > Berry Boessenkool <berryboessenk...@hotmail.com> writes: > > > Hi, > > > > is someone aware of a way to easily install a package hosted on github > without using devtools::install_github? > > Does anyone else ever need to avoid devtools? > Hi, > > Check out drat [https://github.com/eddelbuettel/drat] and for a > description check out > [http://eddelbuettel.github.io/drat/DratForPackageAuthors.html]. > > Be aware that I have never used it - but I should... > > Cheers, > > Rainer > > > > Would something doing that be worth a package on CRAN? > > Optional if no,yes,yes: Is my basic idea below any good at all? > > > > Thanks ahead, > > Berry, Potsdam, Germany > > > > Details: > > > > devtools has so many dependencies that it takes quite some time to > install on old computers or with slow internet. Not suitable for a quick > demo in the R course I'm teaching, which I found out the hard way (thinking > R had hung up, I terminated it, crashing Rstudio in the proces...). > > Not finding anything and happy to postpone actual work, I wrote some > (very!) basic code. I doubt it works across platforms and situations. I > guess I'm doing useless stuff, but I had fun and learned a few new things... > > > > > > instgithub <- function( > > pk, # "user/package" > > cleanup=TRUE, # remove downloaded zipfile and folder with source code > > ...) # Further arguments passed to install.packages, untested so far > > { > > pkn <- strsplit(pk, "/")[[1]][2] # package name part > > download.file(url=paste0("https://github.com/ > ",pk,"/archive/master.zip"), > > destfile=paste0(pkn,".zip")) > > unzip(paste0(pkn,".zip")) > > file.rename(paste0(pkn,"-master"), pkn) > > # Dependencies - really not elegant at all! > > deps <- read.dcf(paste0(pkn, "/DESCRIPTION"), fields="Imports") > > deps <- strsplit(deps, ", ")[[1]] > > deps <- sapply(strsplit(deps, " ", fixed=T), "[", 1) # remove version > restrictions > > deps <- deps[!deps %in% rownames(installed.packages())] # install only > new packages > > # install dependencies > > dummy <- lapply(na.omit(deps), install.packages, ...) > > # actually install the package itself: > > install.packages(pkn, repos=NULL, type="source", ...) > > # clean up: > > if(cleanup) > > { > > unlink(pkn, recursive=TRUE) > > unlink(paste0(pkn,".zip")) > > } > > } > > > > # example test cases, work fine on windows 7 with current R3.2.2 + write > permission at getwd: > > if(FALSE){ > > instgithub(pk="brry/extremeStat") > > library(extremeStat) > > instgithub("talgalili/installr") > > instgithub("hadley/readxl") > > } > > > > > > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel > > -- > Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation > Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) > > Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology > Stellenbosch University > South Africa > > Tel : +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44 > Cell: +33 - (0)6 85 62 59 98 > Fax : +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44 > > Fax (D): +49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44 > > email: rai...@krugs.de > > Skype: RMkrug > > PGP: 0x0F52F982 > ______________________________________________ > R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-package-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-package-devel
