announce/packrat-0.2.0.md

In rstudio/packrat: A Dependency Management System for Projects and their R Package Dependencies

Packrat 0.2.0

We're excited to announce version 0.2.0 of packrat! We've introduced a number of exciting features in this release:

• packrat_mode allows you to seamlessly step in and out of packrat mode, for when you would would like to manage or use external projects while working with a packrat project. In addition, once you have entered packrat mode, the project directory is remembered for all later calls to packrat functions, e.g. snapshot, clean, restore, and so on -- so calling these functions without arguments will use the project directory, even if you have navigated outside of the project or to a project sub-directory.

• The packrat project files have been migrated into a single packrat/ folder -- this keeps pollution in the base directory of your project down. The remappings are:

  • packrat.sources -> packrat/src,
  • library -> packrat/lib,
  • packrat.lock -> packrat/packrat.lock, and
  • the .Renviron has been removed.

• bundle and unbundle allow you to zip up your project as a tarball for easy sharing,

• with_extlib and extlib allow you to (temporarily) load and use packages within the user library; this can be useful if you want to leverage another package (for example, devtools::install_github) while avoiding dependencies on devtools itself,

• Packrat can now handle source package tarballs, rather than just source package folders,

• A number of bugs relating to status() output have been fixed and tweaked, to give better information to the user.

• Projects in packrat mode will have automatic, asynchronous snapshots for safe actions: with automatic snapshots on, packrat will automatically upgrade packages that are out of date, or add packages that are new to the lock file (e.g. when seen by an install.packages() call). Downgrades, removals and 'crossgrades' will be ignored and will require you to take an appropriate action (guided by the information provided by status()).

• Packrat will warn you if you have user libraries in the system library path. In addition, packrat supplies a script for OS X users, to assist in migrating user packages from the system library to a separate user library. (By default, R versions compiled for Mac OS X install all packages into the system library; for packrat to function correctly we require that user and system libraries be separate -- this script should help facilitate the process. If you have any problems with migration, please let us know!)

We will also be working on integration with the RStudio IDE in the coming weeks: here, we can provide a user-friendly interface for many of the packrat actions, and also leverage many tools within the IDE for better and smarter automatic updating of your packrat projects. Stay tuned!

If you'd like to migrate a 'packrat 0.1.0' project to the new format, please do the following:

1. Navigate to your packrat project directory,
2. Remove the project .Rprofile file,
3. Start an R session in this folder,
4. Run the following script:

   if (!require("devtools")) install.packages("devtools")
   devtools::install_github("rstudio/packrat")
   packrat::migrate()
   

After this, you can restart your R session, and you should be good to go!

Thanks, Kevin

rstudio/packrat documentation built on Feb. 5, 2024, 9:17 p.m.