Stuck in update/install.packages loop on Windows

General
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1

Hi,

I have several students who use Windows and are running into a problem when trying to install packages and update their R versions. They both are running R 4.2.2 and I recommended using updateR() from the installr package, but when they try to install the package, it says it was build under R 4.2.3 and updateR() hangs.

However, on the installr page on CRAN, it says

Depends: R (≥ 2.14.0)

which suggests it shouldn't matter if they're running R 4.2.2.

Any ideas of what I could suggest to them aside from reinstalling from scratch?

2

I think these two things might be unrelated, and it is impossible to tell why the package hangs without debugging it.

Nevertheless, I don't recommend using the installr package, as it has some rather questionable choices when it comes to package libraries. E.g. creating a "global" package library at a non-standard place, copying packages between R versions, even if those packages are not incompatible with the target R version.

Some modern alternatives are rig (GitHub - r-lib/rig: The R Installation Manager) for installing R and pak (All about installing pak. — Installing pak • pak) for installing packages. If you install R with rig, it'll automatically install pak.

3

The documentation you linked seems to suggest that you can install the version of pak that corresponds to your R version

install.packages("pak", repos = sprintf(
  "https://r-lib.github.io/p/pak/stable/%s/%s/%s",
  .Platform$pkgType,
  R.Version()$os,
  R.Version()$arch
))

but only if you have a development version of R — is that correct?

I ask because my students may not have enough experience to use the alternative installation approaches mentioned there.

4

No, that page says:

This is supported for the following systems:

OS CPU R version
Linux x86_64 R 3.4.0 - R-devel
Linux aarch64 R 3.4.0 - R-devel
macOS High Sierra+ x86_64 R 3.4.0 - R-devel
macOS Big Sur+ aarch64 R 4.1.0 - R-devel
Windows x86_64 R 3.4.0 - R-devel

I.e. on any R version between R 3.4.0 and R-devel (currently R 4.5.0), on Windows.

5

I see — thanks for the clarification! I'll see if this can get them up an running again.