update packages installed from github

Question

I'm using more and more dev packages installed from github.

I find myself wondering if there is an easy way to update these packages? Essentially looking for something like update.packages() equivalent for install_github() (or indeed any other repo than CRAN).

Similar question for R-forge has some ideas:

Automatically update packages installed from R-forge

Maybe the best way to do this would be to install dev packages in their own separate directory:

How to specify lib directory when installing development version R Packages from github repository

keep a tab on packages as they are installed, and try re-installing list regularly.

Any thoughts?

In general, this is difficult because CRAN is a single repository, while github is a trillion separate repositories. That's why you need stuff like what @hrbrmstr refers to. As to what happens if a github package has CRAN dependencies, I dunno :-) — Carl Witthoft
Ok, that package does the trick nicely! I particularly like the whats_new() functionality to look over whether updating is a worthwhile risk? I presume that because packages are simply re-installed via github_install(), CRAN and indeed other dependencies are taken care of? — carnust
you can also add a github repository as drat-repository via the drat package from Dirk Eddelbuettel. After that you can use update.packages() on it — jeborsel

Unknown Unknown · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-17T15:38:11

There are a number of packages that will do this:

@hrbrmstr recommends the dtupdate package

@jeborsel suggests adding a github repository as drat-repository via the drat package from Dirk Eddelbuettel. This will let you use update.packages() on it

update packages installed from github

3 Answers