In pak: Another Approach to Package Installation

Package installation

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

Install a package from CRAN or Bioconductor

#| label: tldr-cran
#| asciicast_at: all
#| asciicast_knitr_output: svg
#| asciicast_cursor: FALSE
pak::pkg_install("tibble")

pak automatically sets a CRAN repository and the Bioconductor repositories that corresponds to the current R version.

Install a package from GitHub

#| label: tldr-gh
pak::pkg_install("tidyverse/tibble")

Use the user/repo form. You can specify a branch or tag: user/repo@branch or user/repo@tag.

Install a package from a URL

#| label: tldr-url
pak::pkg_install(
  "url::https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/tibble/tibble_3.1.7.tar.gz"
)

The URL may point to an R package file, made with R CMD build, or a .tar.gz or .zip archive of a package tree.

Package updates

Update a package

#| label: tldr-update
pak::pkg_install("tibble")

pak::pkg_install() automatically updates the package.

Update all dependencies of a package

#| label: tldr-update-all
pak::pkg_install("tibble", upgrade = TRUE)

upgrade = TRUE updates the package itself and all of its dependencies, if necessary.

Reinstall a package

Add ?reinstall to the package name or package reference in general:

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

Dependency lookup

Dependencies of a CRAN or Bioconductor package

#| label: tldr-deps
pak::pkg_deps("tibble")

The results are returned in a data frame.

Dependency tree of a CRAN / Bioconductor package

#| label: tldr-deps-tree
pak::pkg_deps_tree("tibble")

The results are also silently returned in a data frame.

Dependency tree of a package on GitHub

#| label: tldr-deps-gh
pak::pkg_deps_tree("tidyverse/tibble")

Use the user/repo form. As usual, you can also select a branch, tag, or sha, with the user/repo@branch, user/repo@tag or user/repo@sha forms.

Dependency tree of the package in the current directory

#| label: tldr-deps-local-pre
#| include: false
dl <- pak::pkg_download("tibble", platforms = "source", tempdir())
untar(dl$fulltarget[1])

#| label: tldr-deps-local
#| dependson: tldr-deps-local-pre
pak::local_deps_tree("tibble")

Assuming package is in directory tibble.

Explain a recursive dependency

How does tibble depend on rlang?

#| label: tldr-deps-explain
pak::pkg_deps_explain("tibble", "rlang")

Use can also use the user/repo form for packages from GitHub, url::... for packages at URLs, etc.

Package development

#| label: tldr-pkg-pre
#| include: false
#| cache: false
dl <- pak::pkg_download("tibble", platforms = "source", tempdir())
untar(dl$fulltarget[1])
setwd("tibble")
try(pak:::pkg_data$remote$kill(), silent = TRUE)

Install dependencies of local package

#| label: tldr-pkg-deps
pak::local_install_deps()

Install local package

#| label: tldr-pkg-install
pak::local_install()

Install all dependencies of local package

#| label: tldr-pkg-dev-deps
pak::local_install_dev_deps()

Installs development and optional dependencies as well.

#| label: tldr-pkg-post
#| include: false
#| cache: false
setwd("..")
try(pak:::pkg_data$remote$kill(), silent = TRUE)

Repositories

List current repositories

#| label: tldr-repo-list
pak::repo_get()

If you haven't set a CRAN or Bioconductor repository, pak does that automatically.

Add custom repository

#| label: tldr-repo-add
pak::repo_add(rhub = 'https://r-hub.r-universe.dev')
pak::repo_get()

Remove custom repositories

#| label: tldr-repo-remove
#| dependson: "!expr '-1'"
options(repos = getOption("repos")["CRAN"])
pak::repo_get()

If you set the repos option to a CRAN repo only, or unset it completely, then pak keeps only CRAN and (by default) Bioconductor.

Time travel using RSPM

#| label: tldr-repo-rspm
pak::repo_add(CRAN = "RSPM@2022-06-30")
pak::repo_get()

Sets a repository that is equivalent to CRAN's state closest to the specified date. Name this repository CRAN, otherwise pak will also add a default CRAN repository.

Time travel using MRAN

#| label: tldr-repo-mran
pak::repo_add(CRAN = "MRAN@2022-06-30")
pak::repo_get()

Sets a repository that is equivalent to CRAN's state at the specified date. Name this repository CRAN, otherwise pak will also add a default CRAN repository.

Caches

By default pak caches both metadata and downloaded packages.

Inspect metadata cache

#| label: tldr-meta-list
pak::meta_list()

Update metadata cache

By default pkg_install() and similar functions automatically update the metadata for the currently set repositories if it is older than 24 hours. You can also force an update manually:

#| label: tldr-meta-update
pak::meta_update()

Clean metadata cache

#| label: tldr-meta-clean
pak::meta_clean(force = TRUE)
pak::meta_summary()

Inspect package cache

Downloaded packages are also cached.

#| label: tldr-cache-list
pak::cache_list()

View a package cache summary

#| label: tldr-cache-summary
pak::cache_summary()

Clean package cache

pak::cache_clean()

Libraries

List packages in a library

#| label: tldr-lib-list
pak::lib_status(Sys.getenv("R_LIBS_USER"))

Pass the directory of the library as the argument.

pak documentation built on June 8, 2025, 11:42 a.m.