NEWS.md

In r-lib/depends: Package Dependency Resolution and Downloads

pkgdepends (development version)

• New function scan_deps() to auto-detect package dependencies from R code. deps::. automatically uses detected dependencies now if no DESCRIPTION file is found.

pkgdepends 0.8.0

• pkgdepends now supports gitlab:: package sources better, by adding explicit syntax to specify subdirectories (#353, @dgkf).

• gitlab:: and git:: package sources now support git submodules if the git-submodules configuration option is set to TRUE. See ?"pkgdepends-config" (#354).

• The new ?ignore-unavailable parameter makes it easy to ignore soft dependencies that are unavailable (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/606).

• pkgdepends now automatically ignores soft dependencies that have an incompatible OS type (OS_type entry in DESCRIPTION) when installing packages.

pkgdepends 0.7.2

• pkgdepends now supports the * wildcard for parameter specifications, for parameters applied to all packages. E.g. *=?source means compiling all packages from source.

pkgdepends 0.7.1

• pkgdepends now does not import the glue, rprojroot and prettyunits packages.

• pkgdepends can now handle the case when Config/Needs/* dependencies are requested for package from a repository.

pkgdepends 0.7.0

• pkgdepends now correctly resolves the latest GitHub release with the @*release notation (@pawelru, #321, #275).

• pkgdepends now correctly handles having multiple instances of the same package in the metadata, with different R version requirements (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/534, #331, https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/538).

• git:: package references work better now for Azure DevOps (@jameslairdsmith, #333, #342).

• pkgdepends now does a better job at accepting installed packages, and avoids reinstalling more packages than needed when using a lock file (https://github.com/r-lib/actions/issues/759, #338).

pkgdepends 0.6.0

• Many system requirements improvements:
• New functions:
  • sysreqs_check_installed(): check if all required system packages are installed,
  • sysreqs_fix_installed(): install missing system packages,
  • sysreqs_db_list(): list system requirements database,
  • sysreqs_db_match(): match SystemRrequirements field(s) to database,
  • sysreqs_db_update(): update system requirements database,
  • sysreqs_install_plan(): look up system requirements for a package and its dependencies,
  • sysreqs_is_supported(): check if pkgdepends supports system requirements on your platform,
  • sysreqs_list_system_packages(): list installed system packages,
  • sysreqs_platforms(): list supported platforms.
  • New pkg_installation_proposal methods: get_sysreqs(), show_sysreqs() and update_sysreqs().
• The output of $show_solution() now includes system requirements.
• New sysreqs_platform configuration option.
• pkgdepends now looks up system requirements asynchronously, during dependency resolution.

• pkgdepends now does not reinstall system requirements by default, if they are already installed. (You can force a reinstall/upgrade with the sysreqs_update configuration option.)

• New gitlab:: package source to install packages from GitLab (#315).

• pkgdepends now correctly parses multiple git:: packages at once (#318).

• Fix @*release reference for the latest release.

• git:: package sources now support version 1 of the git protocol. E.g. the Bioconductor git repositories now work: git::https://git.bioconductor.org/packages/limma (#314).

• The platforms config parameter now works correctly with deps:: package sources (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/522).

• New include_linkingto config parameter to always include LinkingTo packages in the solution, even for binaries (#485).

• pkg_name_check() now does not include Acromine results, because the web site was unstable.

pkgdepends 0.5.0

• pkgdepends now support git repositories as package references. E.g. git::https://github.com/r-lib/pak.git.

• pkgdepends now supports versioned CRAN packages, e.g. dplyr@1.1.1 will always install dplyr 1.1.1. Note that only CRAN packages are supported, Bioconductor packages are not (yet).

• pkgdepends now has an alternative system requirements lookup implementation. It supports Fedora and Debian systems as well, in addition to Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE and RedHat derivatives. You can switch to this implementation by setting the R_PKG_SYSREQS2 environment variable to true.

• pkgdepends now does a better job looking up dependencies for hand-selected dependency types. E.g. dependencies = "LinkingTo".

• pkgdepends now removes ?ignore-d packages from dependencies, and uses the correct version comparison for ?ignore-before.r (https://github.com/r-lib/actions/issues/708).

• pkgdepends now does not fail for circular soft dependencies (#306).

• pkgdepends now reports dependency solver failures better in some cases (#305, https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/474).

• pkgdepends now uses locally built CRAN binaries from the cache.

pkgdepends 0.4.0

• pkgdepends has much improved and more informative error messages now. This work is not yet finished, so if you find an unclear error message, please open an issue. Thank you!

• The solver is now more robust for non-canonical input (e.g. DESCRIPTION files) (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/423).

• Better installation output. Standard output and error are now collected together (https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdepends/commit/0669f0f8c).

• The solver is now doing a better job when multiple versions of the same package are present in the same repository (https://github.com/r-lib/actions/issues/559).

• pkg_name_check() now works again, it needed a fix after changes at https://crandb.r-pkg.org.

• Explicit package names in local and URL package sources, as in package=local::... or package=url::... are now parsed correctly in dependencies.

• pkgdepends is now more robust to Archs fields missing from the CRAN metadata for packages with compiled code (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/448).

• url:: packages now always work correctly, even if the digest package is not installed (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/433).

• pkgdepends is now more robust when installing packages from subdirectories of GitHub repositories (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/431, @paleolimbot).

• Parameters ?reinstall, ?source and ?ignore now work correctly when specified in the package=?parameter format (#294).

pkgdepends 0.3.2

• The ?ignore parameter works correctly now.

• dependency resolution now does not fail if a package is not found.

• pkgdepends can now install url:: remotes from GitHub.

• pkgdepends now does not fail when the package of a .tar.gz GitHub snapshot is in a subdirectory, or in a subdirectory of a subdirectory.

• pkgdepends now errors early if it cannot deduce the name of the package from a Remotes or Config/Needs/* entry.

• Solver failures now include details in some cases where previously they did not.

• pkgdepends can now update packages in Docker containers where the old version was installed in the different Docker later (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/251)

• pkgdepends errors are now user friendlier and better formatted.

pkgdepends 0.3.1

• The dependency solver now uses better heuristics and does not (effectively) freeze if multiple repositories have multiple versions of the same packages (e.g. RSPM and CRAN) (#277).

pkgdepends 0.3.0

• New ?ignore-before-r parameter to ignore optional dependencies that need a newer R version (#243).

• New ?ignore parameter to ignore an optional dependency.

• Allow specifying downstream package parameters with the package=?param syntax.

• The $update() operation now works better for any:: refs, and we always install the version we planned for.

• System requirement installation is now more robust and works for Unix shell expressions (#347).

• Make system dependency installation more robust (https://github.com/r-lib/pak/issues/347).

• CRAN-like resolution is more robust now if a repository is missing the usual metadata.

• The lock file is pretty JSON now.

• pkgdepends now does not return tibbles, but simple data frames. They are still printed concisely as long as the pillar package is loaded.

• pkgdepends now handles all version requirement types properly: '<', '<=', ==, >=, >.

pkgdepends 0.2.0

• pkgdepends now has Much better platform support, including arm64 packages on macOS, and single-arch and multi-arch binary packages on Windows.

• Better configuration via environment variables and options, see ?"pkgdepends-config" for details.

• Many improvements for lock files, i.e. the $create_lockfile() method of pkg_installation_proposal.

• System requirements support. This is currently active on Linux, if the CI environment variable is set to true. You can set the PKG_SYSREQS environment variable to true to turn it on in other situations. See ?"pkgdepends-config".

• The new any:: reference type can be used to install a package from any source. See ?pkg_refs for more about this.

pkgdepends 0.1.2

• remotes can now update packages installed by pak. In the past this sometimes did not work (#301).

pkgdepends 0.1.1

• pkg_name_check() works again.

pkgdepends 0.1.0

First CRAN release.

r-lib/depends documentation built on April 14, 2025, 1:59 a.m.