How to install a package from a download zip file

Question

I have download this package as a zip file.

Is it possible to install it from R console using this zip or unzip version to a specific path?

install.p         


        

Answer 1

You have downloaded a zip of the source of a package. This is not the standard packaging of a package source nor is it a standard Windows binary (i.e., a built package distributed as a .zip, as from CRAN).

The easiest thing for you to do is to install this package directly from Github using devtools:

library("devtools")
install_github("hadley/rvest")

If you decide to install it locally, you need to unzip the package directory, build it from the command line using R CMD build rvest and then install either using R CMD INSTALL or from within R using the command you already have (but performed on the built "tarball"). Here's how you could do all of this from within R:

setwd("C:/Users/Desktop/")
unzip("rvest-master.zip")
file.rename("rvest-master", "rvest")
shell("R CMD build rvest")

This will make a tarball version of the package in the current directory. You can then install that with

install.packages("rvest_0.2.0.9000.tar.gz", repos = NULL)

Since the version number is merged into the tarball name, it may not always be obvious what the new file might be called. You can use list.files() to grab the new tarball.

install.packages(list.files(pattern="rvest*.tar.gz"), repos = NULL)

If the shell() line gives you an error like this

'R' is not recognized as an internal or external command

You need to make sure that R is in your shell path. You can add it with something like

Sys.setenv(PATH=paste(R.home("bin"), Sys.getenv("PATH"), sep=";"))