R: Install Add-on Packages

INSTALL {utils} | R Documentation

## Install Add-on Packages

### Description

Utility for installing add-on packages.

### Usage

    R CMD INSTALL [options] [-l lib] pkgs

### Arguments

`pkgs` | A space-separated list with the path names of the packages to be installed.
`lib` | the path name of the R library tree to install to.
`options` | a space-separated list of options through which in particular the process for building the help files can be controlled. Options should only be given once. Use `R CMD INSTALL --help` for the current list of options.

### Details

This will stop at the first error, so if you want all the `pkgs` to be tried, call this via a shell `for` or `foreach` loop.

If used as `R CMD INSTALL pkgs` without explicitly specifying `lib`, packages are installed into the library tree rooted at the first directory in the library path which would be used by R run in the current environment.

To install into the library tree `lib`, use `R CMD INSTALL -l lib pkgs`. This prepends `lib` to R_LIBS for duration of the install, so required packages in the installation directory will be found (and used in preference to those in other libraries).

Both `lib` and the elements of `pkgs` may be absolute or relative path names of directories. `pkgs` may also contain names of package/bundle archive files of the form ‘pkg_version.tar.gz’ as obtained from CRAN: these are then extracted in a temporary directory. Finally, binary package/bundle archive files (as created by `R CMD build --binary` can be supplied.

Some package sources contain a ‘configure’ script that can be passed arguments or variables via the option --configure-args and --configure-vars, respectively, if necessary. The latter is useful in particular if libraries or header files needed for the package are in non-system directories. In this case, one can use the configure variables `LIBS` and `CPPFLAGS` to specify these locations (and set these via --configure-vars), see section “Configuration variables” in “R Installation and Administration” for more information. (If these are used more than once on the command line, only the last instance is used.) One can bypass the configure mechanism using the option --no-configure.

If --no-docs is given, no help files are built. Options --no-text, --no-html, and --no-latex suppress creating the text, HTML, and LaTeX versions, respectively. The default is to build help files in all three versions.

If the attempt to install the package fails, leftovers are removed. If the package was already installed, the old version is restored. This happens either if a command encounters an error or if the install is interrupted from the keyboard: after cleaning up the script terminates.

Use `R CMD INSTALL --help` for more usage information.

### Packages using the methods package

Packages that require the methods package and make use functions such as `setMethod` or `setClass`, should be installed using lazy-loading (or, deprecated, by creating a binary image): use the field `LazyLoad` in the ‘DESCRIPTION’ file to ensure this.

### See Also

`REMOVE` and `library` for information on using several library trees; `update.packages` for automatic update of packages using the internet (or other R level installation of packages, such as by `install.packages`).

The section on “Add-on packages” in “R Installation and Administration” and the chapter on “Creating R packages” in “Writing R Extensions” (see `RShowDoc` and the ‘doc/manual’ subdirectory of the R source tree).

[Package utils version 2.6.2 Index]