In pak: Another Approach to Package Installation

Package installation

#| label: asciicast-setup
#| include: false
#| cache: false
dir.create(.lib <- tempfile())
.libPaths(c(.lib, .libPaths()))

How do I reinstall a package?

pak does not reinstall a package, if the same version is already installed. Sometimes you still want a reinstall, e.g. to fix a broken installation. In this case you can delete the package and then install it, or use the ?reinstall parameter:

#| label: faq-reinstall
pak::pkg_install("tibble")

#| label: faq-reinstall-2
pak::pkg_install("tibble?reinstall")

How do I install a dependency from a binary package

Sometimes it is sufficient to install the binary package of an older version of a dependency, instead of the newer source package that potentially needs compilers, system tools or libraries.

pkg_install() and lockfile_create() default to upgrade = FALSE, which always chooses binaries over source packages, so if you use pkg_install() you don't need to do anything extra.

The local_install_* functions default to upgrade = TRUE, as does pak() with pkg = NULL, so for these you need to explicitly use upgrade = FALSE.

How do I install a package from source?

To force the installation of a source package (instead of a binary package), use the ?source parameter:

#| label: faq-source
pak::pkg_install("tibble?source")

How do I install the latest version of a dependency?

If you want to always install a dependency from source, because you want the latest version or some other reason, you can use the source parameter with the <package>= form: <package>=?source. For example to install tibble, with its cli dependency installed from source you could write:

#| label: faq-source-dep
pak::pkg_install(c("tibble", "cli=?source"))

How do I ignore an optional dependency?

#| label: faq-ignore
pak::pkg_install(
  c("tibble", "DiagrammeR=?ignore", "formattable=?ignore"),
  dependencies = TRUE
)

The syntax is

<packagename>=?ignore

Note that you can only ignore optional dependencies, i.e. packages in Suggests and Enhances.

Others

How can I use pak with renv?

Since version 1.0.0 renv has official support for using pak. This needs to be enabled with the renv.config.pak.enabled option or the RENV_CONFIG_PAK_ENABLED environment variable set to TRUE. For more information see the renv documentation.