R package updates

Question

I have been having some issues accessing an updated version of a package in R.

On running a workflow for data analysis I got this error message:

Answer 1

Restart R and run install.packages again. On Windows, you can't update a package that's already loaded, if the package contains compiled C/C++/Fortran code. This includes dplyr and rlang.

To be doubly sure, before you run install.packages, go to your R packages directory (C:/Users/tomsp/OneDrive/Documents/R/win-library/3.5) and delete any zero-length files that are present. These are artifacts of failed install attempts and will break install.packages if present.

Answer 2

For any reason, at least in Windows, some R processes may still be running in background. Close your current R session, kill all processes related to R and try again.