Install binary zipped R package via command line

Question

I am trying to install zipped binary R packages via command line on a windows 7 machine with

R CMD INSTALL packagename

but it doesn\'t work. I

Answer 1

You can use the Rscript front end to run code as if it were in a running R session. Say the package you want to install is foo.zip in the current working directory. I'm probably abusing Rscript here, but it works for me:

Rscript -e "install.packages('foo.zip', repos = NULL)"

You need to supply the path to the binary package if it is not in the directory where there script is running. repos = NULL is the trick to get install.packages() to work from a local file. Read ?install.packages for more info on other arguments you might want to specify, especially lib. Note that you don't benefit from automatic dependency resolution when doing this - you need a repo for that and if you supply one, R will try to download packages.

You are right about R CMD INSTALL; the R Installation and Administration manual has the following in Section 6.3:

To install packages from source in a Unix-alike use

    R CMD INSTALL -l /path/to/library pkg1 pkg2 ...