Managing R packages

rig pkg installs, removes and lists R packages in a library, and looks up package information, dependencies and dependency trees from the repositories, all without starting R.

NoteExperimental

rig pkg is experimental. Its commands and output may still change.

rig pkg operates on packages, inside a library. It is a companion to two other command families:

• rig library manages the libraries themselves (creating, listing and removing library directories, and choosing the default one), not the packages inside them.
• rig proj manages a project’s dependencies through a manifest and lockfile, resolving a consistent set of versions across the whole project. Use it instead of rig pkg install when you want reproducible, project-level dependencies.

Looking up packages

rig pkg available, rig pkg info, rig pkg deps and rig pkg tree query the package repositories, not any installed library:

rig pkg available                 # every package, latest version, dep count
rig pkg info cli                  # DESCRIPTION of the latest cli
rig pkg info cli --versions       # every version ever published
rig pkg info cli --readme         # the package's README
rig pkg deps dplyr                # direct dependencies, with versions
rig pkg deps dplyr --recursive    # the whole dependency closure
rig pkg tree dplyr                # the same, as a visual tree
rig pkg tree dplyr --why glue     # how does dplyr depend on glue

By default they only consider hard dependencies (Depends, Imports, LinkingTo). Add --dev to include Suggests and Enhances as well. Every command also takes --json for machine-readable output.

Installing packages

rig pkg install cli glue

rig resolves the whole dependency tree before installing anything, so a package is only installed if everything it needs can be installed alongside it, at versions that work together. --dry-run runs the resolution and reports what rig would do, without installing anything.

A few flags worth knowing:

• --reinstall installs every package in the resolution, even ones already up to date. Without it, rig does nothing if the requested packages and their dependencies are already installed and up to date.
• --dev also installs Suggests and Enhances. --ignore-unavailable skips dev dependencies that are not available in the repositories, instead of failing.
• --prefer-binary[=N] trades a newer version for an older one that already has a binary build, useful when compiling from source is expensive.
• Packages can also be installed from git, GitHub or GitLab, not just the repositories. See rig pkg install for the full syntax.

A package on your own machine is installed by path:

rig pkg install .                    # the package in the current directory
rig pkg install ./mypkg
rig pkg install mypkg_1.0.0.tar.gz   # a source tarball
rig pkg install mypkg_1.0.0.tgz      # a binary package file

A path is a package source directory, a source tarball, or a binary package built with R CMD INSTALL --build; its dependencies are resolved and installed as usual. An argument is a path when it is ., starts with ./, ../, ~/ or /, or names a package file that exists, so mypkg still means the repositories’ mypkg.

On Linux, rig also installs the system libraries and tools that the packages need, e.g. libcurl4-openssl-dev for curl on Ubuntu, from their SystemRequirements fields. It does this itself if it runs as root or if sudo works without a password, and otherwise prints the commands to run. --no-sysreqs turns this off. See rig pkg install for the details.

Listing and removing packages

rig pkg list                 # list packages in a library
rig pkg remove cli glue      # remove package(s) from a library

Neither command starts R. rig pkg remove refuses to remove a base package (base, stats, utils, …) unless --force is given, since R does not work without them. On the other hand it does not check whether another installed package still needs the one being removed.

Choosing a library

By default rig pkg install, rig pkg list and rig pkg remove all operate on the default library of the default R version. Use --library (-l) to target another library by name or path, and --r-version (-r) to target a library of another R version:

rig pkg install --library myproject cli
rig pkg install --library /usr/lib/R/site-library cli
rig pkg list --r-version 4.4.1

See rig library for how libraries are named and how the default one is chosen. In admin mode, the site and system libraries belong to the administrator, so installing into or removing from them needs sudo (an administrator account on Windows), your own user libraries never do.

See also

• The rig pkg reference for the full list of flags and options of every subcommand.
• The rig library reference for managing library directories.
• The rig proj reference for project-level, reproducible dependency management.
• Admin mode vs user mode for when installing or removing a package needs elevated privileges.