Build & Reload in RStudio on Windows: devtools::document() says devtools not found

Question

When I click \"Build & Reload\" on the Build tab within RStudio, I get the following error:

==> devtools::document(roclets=c(\'rd\', \'collate\', \'namesp         


        

Answer 1

I encountered this problem multiple times and also with other packages related to devtools (e.g. knitr in the devtools::check()). As it was getting on my nerves, I tried to install devtools in other location of .libPaths(), i.e. in the first standard one (in my case it was /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/). It was telling me that I needed sudo rights. I gave them (as I was utterly annoyed by this) but still, it is needed a large number of dependencies. Therefore, my practical solution was to sudo-copy my "special" R library folder into the standard one. The following code fixed all my problems:

sudo cp -rf /home/myname/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.4/* /usr/local/lib/R/site-library/

I would like to point out that this is the only effective solution I found. Even so, it lacks elegance and I would definitely prefer if the guys from Rstudio provide a way to link Rstudio to a personally-defined library. It was already my case on startup and I had to add my personal lib to .libPaths() in the file Rprofile.site which is run every time on R startup, but this did not solve the above problem anyhow.