| install.packages {utils} | R Documentation |
Download and install packages from CRAN-like repositories or from local files.
install.packages(pkgs, lib, repos = getOption("repos"),
contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
method, available = NULL, destdir = NULL,
dependencies = NA, type = getOption("pkgType"),
configure.args = getOption("configure.args"),
configure.vars = getOption("configure.vars"),
clean = FALSE, Ncpus = getOption("Ncpus", 1L),
libs_only = FALSE, INSTALL_opts, ...)
pkgs |
character vector of the names of packages whose current versions should be downloaded from the repositories. If If this is missing or a zero-length character vector, a listbox of available packages is presented where possible in an interactive R session. |
lib |
character vector giving the library directories where to
install the packages. Recycled as needed. If missing, defaults to
the first element of |
repos |
character vector, the base URLs of the repositories
to use, e.g., the URL of a CRAN mirror such as
Can be |
contriburl |
URL(s) of the contrib sections of the repositories. Use this
argument only if your repository mirror is incomplete, e.g., because
you burned only the ‘contrib’ section on a CD. Overrides
argument |
method |
download method, see |
available |
an object as returned by |
destdir |
directory where downloaded packages are stored. If it is
|
dependencies |
logical indicating to also install uninstalled
packages which these packages depend on/link to/import/suggest
(and so on recursively). Not used if Only supported if The default,
|
type |
character, indicating the type of package to download and install. Possible values are The default is the appropriate binary type on Windows and on
the CRAN binary Mac OS X distribution, otherwise |
configure.args |
(not used on Windows) a character vector or a named list. If a
character vector with no names is supplied, the elements are
concatenated into a single string (separated by a space) and used as
the value for the --configure-args flag in the call to
A named list can be used also to the same effect, and that allows multi-element character strings for each package which are concatenated to a single string to be used as the value for --configure-args. |
configure.vars |
(not used on Windows) analogous to |
clean |
a logical value indicating whether to specify
to add the --clean flag to the call to
|
Ncpus |
The number of parallel processes to use for a parallel
install of more than one source package. Values greater than one
are supported if the |
libs_only |
a logical value: should the --libs-only option be used to
install only additional sub-architectures? (See also
|
INSTALL_opts |
an optional character vector of additional option(s) to be passed to
|
... |
Arguments to be passed to |
R packages are primarily distributed as source packages, but
binary packages (a packaging up of the installed package) are
also supported, and the type most commonly used on Windows and from
the CRAN distribution for Mac OS X. This function can install either
type where supported, either by downloading a file from a repository
or from a local file. The default type is given by
getOption("pkgType"): this defaults to "source"
apart from under Windows or a CRAN binary distribution for Mac OS X.
This is the main function to install packages. It takes
a vector of names and a destination library, downloads the packages
from the repositories and installs them. (If the library is omitted
it defaults to the first directory in .libPaths(), with a
message if there is more than one.) If lib is omitted or is of
length one and is not a (group) writable directory, the code offers
to create a personal library tree (the first element of
Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER")) and install there.
Detection of a writable directory is problematic on Windows: see the
‘Note’ section.
For source packages from a repository an attempt is made to
install the packages in an order that respects their dependencies.
This does assume that all the entries in lib are on the default
library path for installs (set by R_LIBS).
Using packages with type = "source" always works on Windows
provided the package contains no C/C++/Fortran code that needs
compilation. Otherwise you will need to have installed the Rtools
collection as described in the ‘R for Windows FAQ’ and
you must have the PATH environment variable set up as required
by Rtools.
When installing a binary package, install.packages will abort
the install if it detects that the package is already installed and is
currently in use. In some circumstances (e.g. multiple instances of
R running at the same time and sharing a library) it will not detect a
problem, but the installation may fail.
You are advised to run update.packages before
install.packages to ensure that any already installed
dependencies have their latest versions.
Argument libs_only = TRUE is supported for source installs and for
Windows binary installs.
Invisible NULL.
There are various options for locking: these differ between source and binary installs.
By default for a source install, the library directory is
‘locked’ by creating a directory ‘00LOCK’ within it. This
has two purposes: it prevents any other process installing into that
library concurrently, and is used to store any previous version of the
package to restore on error. A finer-grained locking is provided by
the option --pkglock which creates a separate lock for each
package: this allows enough freedom for parallel
installation. Per-package locking is the default when installing a
single package, and for multiple packages when Ncpus > 1L.
Finally locking (and restoration on error) can be suppressed by
--no-lock.
For a Mac OS X or Windows binary install, no locking is done by
default. Setting argument lock to TRUE (it defaults to
the value of getOption("install.lock", FALSE)) will use
per-directory locking as described for source installs: if the value
is "pkglock" per-package locking will be used.
If package locking is used on Windows with libs_only = TRUE and
the installation fails, the package will be restored to its previous
state.
Note that it is possible for the package installation to fail so badly
that the lock directory is not removed: this inhibits any further
installs to the library directory (or for --pkglock, of the
package) until the lock directory is removed manually.
Parallel installs are attempted if pkgs has length greater than
one and Ncpus > 1. It makes use of a parallel make,
so the make specified (default make) when R was
built must be capable of supporting make -j n: GNU make
and dmake do, but FreeBSD and Solaris make do not:
if necessary environment variable MAKE can be set for the
current session to select a suitable make.
install.packages needs to be able to compute all the
dependencies of pkgs from available, including if one
element of pkgs depends indirectly on another. This means that
if for example you are installing CRAN packages which depend
on Bioconductor packages which in turn depend on CRAN
packages, available needs to cover both CRAN and
Bioconductor packages.
install.packages tries to detect if you have write permission
on the library directories specified, but Windows reports unreliably.
If there is only one library directory (the default), R tries to
find out by creating a test directory, but even this need not be the
whole story. Under Windows Vista and later you may have permission to
write in a library directory but lack permission to write binary files
(such as ‘.dll’ files) there. See the ‘R for Windows FAQ’
for workarounds.
update.packages,
available.packages,
download.packages,
installed.packages,
contrib.url.
See download.file for how to handle proxies and
other options to monitor file transfers.
INSTALL, REMOVE, remove.packages,
library, .packages, read.dcf
The ‘R Installation and Administration’ manual for how to set up a repository.
## Not run:
install.packages(
c("XML_0.99-5.tar.gz",
"../../Interfaces/Perl/RSPerl_0.8-0.tar.gz"),
repos = NULL,
configure.args = c(XML = '--with-xml-config=xml-config',
RSPerl = "--with-modules='IO Fcntl'"))
## End(Not run)