Cannot install scales

[Yogee]

Hi All,

I am new to R and tried to install ggplot2, but got notified that I should install scales first. Upon trying to install scale, I got the following error:

install.packages("scales")
also installing the dependency ‘rlang’

There are binary versions available but the source versions are later:
binary source needs_compilation
rlang 0.4.11 1.0.2 TRUE
scales 1.1.1 1.2.0 FALSE

Binaries will be installed
trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/bin/windows/contrib/3.6/rlang_0.4.11.zip'
Content type 'application/zip' length 1224139 bytes (1.2 MB)
downloaded 1.2 MB

package ‘rlang’ successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

The downloaded binary packages are in
C:\Users\dell\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmp0ozHjq\downloaded_packages
installing the source package ‘scales’

trying URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/src/contrib/scales_1.2.0.tar.gz'
Content type 'application/x-gzip' length 270188 bytes (263 KB)
downloaded 263 KB

• installing source package 'scales' ...
  ** package 'scales' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked
  ** using staged installation
  ** R
  ** byte-compile and prepare package for lazy loading
  Error in loadNamespace(i, c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[i]]) :
  namespace 'rlang' 0.4.11 is being loaded, but >= 1.0.0 is required
  Calls: ... withCallingHandlers -> loadNamespace -> namespaceImport -> loadNamespace
  Execution halted
  ERROR: lazy loading failed for package 'scales'
• removing 'C:/Users/dell/anaconda3/envs/rstudio/lib/R/library/scales'
  Warning in install.packages :
  installation of package ‘scales’ had non-zero exit status

The downloaded source packages are in
‘C:\Users\dell\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmp0ozHjq\downloaded_packages’

Please help.

Thanks,
Yogee.

[JoeR]

Hi Yogee,

The problem is that it's trying to install a newer version of scales that requires a newer version of rlang that isn't available. I notice that it appears you're using R 3.6, which is getting quite old. The easiest option would be to upgrade to a newer version of R (4.2.1 is the current version), then everything should install fine.

If you really need to use R 3.6, install the compatible binary version of the scales package with:

install.packages("scales", type="binary")

and that should work for you

Cheers,
Joe