Install binary packages on RHEL9 from POSIT Package Manager

[christopher_gies]

Hello,

as documented under Setup | Package Manager
I try to download binary packages for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 environment.

Unfortunately I always get the following error

$ R --version
R version 4.4.0 (2024-04-24) -- "Puppy Cup"
Copyright (C) 2024 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
Platform: x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu

$ /usr/bin/Rscript --slave --no-save --no-restore-history -e '
install.packages("arrow", lib="~", repos="https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/__linux__/rhel9/latest", type="binary")'
Error in install.packages("arrow", lib = "~", repos = "https://packagemanager.posit.co/cran/__linux__/rhel9/latest",  :
  type 'binary' is not supported on this platform
Execution halted

It looks to me like the error message is not coming from the POSIT CRAN server but from my R installation. How can I tell this that pre compiled binaries for REHL9 are also available on the CRAN server I use.

[Gabor]

Do not specify type = "binary", it is best to drop that argument entirely. R only has built-in support for Windows and macOS binaries, so PPM sends the Linux binaries as source packages.

(Did you find that in the docs somewhere? Where? Then we need to fix the docs.)

[christopher_gies]

I didn't really find anything about this in the documentation, but for me it was logical that if I want binary packages I have to specify type = “binary”. Maybe it would be useful to add this information to the documentation that PPM sends the Linux binaries as source packages.