oldr: oldr

In duckmayr/oldr: Provides Tools to Install the Latest Available Versions of R Packages for Old Versions of R

Description

oldr provides a function to install the latest available version of an R package for old versions of R.

Details

This package was created in response to a Stack Overflow question (available here) about the common problem of dealing with a package being unavailable and requesting a programmatic way to install the latest version of a package that is available for your version of R.

The approach taken in this package was developed independently of, but resembles, an approach taken in an answer to a similar question (available here). However, this approach is slightly different in a few respects. For example, only functions from base R are needed, specifically only functions from the base and utils packages. Additionally, (likely incomplete) pains are taken here to help ensure back-compatibility for older versions of R that were not taken in the other approach.

It was inspired in part by the source code for the install_version() function for the popular package devtools by Hadley Wickham. However, importantly different approaches to some actions are taken by this package, both to ensure dependence only on base R packages, as well as to ensure it will work with older versions of the url() function from the base package and the download.files() function from the utils package. Of course, also this package also is not designed just for installation of a specific version of R packages that the user would have to find the version number and supply it, but is designed to find the newest compatible version of an R package for your version of R, then install that version.

Author(s)

JB Duck-Mayr

duckmayr/oldr documentation built on June 26, 2019, 8:14 p.m.