R: Compare Installed Packages with CRAN-like Repositories

update.packages {utils} | R Documentation

## Compare Installed Packages with CRAN-like Repositories

### Description

`old.packages` indicates packages which have a (suitable) later version on the repositories whereas `update.packages` offers to download and install such packages.

`new.packages` looks for (suitable) packages on the repositories that are not already installed, and optionally offers them for installation.

### Usage

    update.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = getOption("repos"),
                    contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                    method, instlib = NULL,
                    ask = TRUE, available = NULL,
                    oldPkgs = NULL, ..., checkBuilt = FALSE,
                    type = getOption("pkgType"))

    old.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = getOption("repos"),
                 contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                 instPkgs = installed.packages(lib.loc = lib.loc),
                 method, available = NULL, checkBuilt = FALSE,
                 type = getOption("pkgType"))

    new.packages(lib.loc = NULL, repos = getOption("repos"),
                 contriburl = contrib.url(repos, type),
                 instPkgs = installed.packages(lib.loc = lib.loc),
                 method, available = NULL, ask = FALSE, ...,
                 type = getOption("pkgType"))

### Arguments

`lib.loc` | character vector describing the location of R library trees to search through (and update packages therein), or `NULL` for all known trees (see `.libPaths`).
`repos` | character vector, the base URL(s) of the repositories to use, e.g., the URL of a CRAN mirror such as `"http://cran.us.r-project.org"`.
`contriburl` | URL(s) of the contrib sections of the repositories. Use this argument if your repository is incomplete. Overrides argument `repos`.
`method` | Download method, see `download.file`.
`instlib` | character string giving the library directory where to install the packages.
`ask` | logical indicating whether to ask user before packages are actually downloaded and installed, or the character string `"graphics"`, which brings up a widget to allow the user to (de-)select from the list of packages which could be updated or added. The latter value only works on systems with a GUI version of `select.list`, and is otherwise equivalent to `ask = TRUE`.
`available` | an object as returned by `available.packages` listing packages available at the repositories, or `NULL` which makes an internal call to `available.packages`.
`checkBuilt` | If `TRUE`, a package built under an earlier major.minor version of R (e.g., `3.1`) is considered to be ‘old’.
`oldPkgs` | if specified as non-NULL, `update.packages()` only considers these packages for updating. This may be a character vector of package names or a matrix as returned by `old.packages()`.
`instPkgs` | by default all installed packages, `installed.packages(lib.loc = lib.loc)`. A subset can be specified; currently this must be in the same (character matrix) format as returned by `installed.packages()`.
`...` | Arguments such as `destdir` and `dependencies` to be passed to `install.packages`.
`type` | character, indicating the type of package to download and install. See `install.packages`.

### Details

`old.packages` compares the information from `available.packages` with that from `instPkgs` (computed by `installed.packages` by default) and reports installed packages that have newer versions on the repositories or, if `checkBuilt = TRUE`, that were built under an earlier minor version of R (for example built under 3.0.x when running R 3.1.0). (For binary package types here is no check that the version on the repository was built under the current minor version of R, but it is advertised as being suitable for this version.)

`new.packages` does the same comparison but reports uninstalled packages that are available at the repositories. If `ask != FALSE` it asks which packages should be installed in the first element of `lib.loc`.

The main function of the set is `update.packages`. First a list of all packages found in `lib.loc` is created and compared with those available at the repositories. If `ask = TRUE` (the default) packages with a newer version are reported and for each one the user can specify if it should be updated. If so the packages are downloaded from the repositories and installed in the respective library path (or `instlib` if specified).

For how the list of suitable available packages is determined see `available.packages`. `available = NULL` make a call to `available.packages(contriburl = contriburl, method = method)` and hence by default filters on R version, OS type and removes duplicates.

### Value

`update.packages` returns `NULL` invisibly.

For `old.packages`, `NULL` or a matrix with one row per package, row names the package names and column names `"Package"`, `"LibPath"`, `"Installed"` (the version), `"Built"` (the version built under), `"ReposVer"` and `"Repository"`.

For `new.packages` a character vector of package names, after any selected via `ask` have been installed.

### Warning

Take care when using `dependencies` (passed to `install.packages`) with `update.packages`, for it is unclear where new dependencies should be installed. The current implementation will only allow it if all the packages to be updated are in a single library, when that library will be used.

### See Also

`install.packages`, `available.packages`, `download.packages`, `installed.packages`, `contrib.url`.

See `download.file` for how to handle proxies and other options to monitor file transfers.

`INSTALL`, `REMOVE`, `remove.packages`, `library`, `.packages`, `read.dcf`

The ‘R Installation and Administration’ manual for how to set up a repository.

[Package utils version 3.1.2 Index]