[R] contriburl argument to install.packages

[Duncan Murdoch]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:09:46 -0400, "John Fox" <jfox at mcmaster.ca>
wrote :

>Dear list members,
>
>I can't figure out how to specify the contriburl argument to
>install.packages() properly when the packages to be installed are in a
>directory on my local machine. I have in mind a command something like
>
>	install.packages(missing.packages, contriburl=directory,
>lib=.libPaths()[1])
>
>Where missing.packages is a character vector of package names (without
>versions) and directory is the location where they reside (less PACKAGES, I
>guess). I'm using R version 1.9.1 on a Windows XP machine. Several
>variations on directory <- "file:c:/temp" don't seem to work.
>
>Any help would be appreciated.

You need a file called PACKAGES in the same directory as the packages,
which contains the package information; for example

 http://www.cran.mirrors.pair.com/bin/windows/contrib/1.9/PACKAGES

I imagine the CRAN maintainers have scripts to produce this from the
package files, but I'm not sure where they are.

To refer to a local version of this file, use the syntax you had, e.g.

 CRAN.packages(contriburl="file:c:/temp")

will look for c:/temp/PACKAGES and display the information in it.  

If you don't want to maintain this file, then you can construct the
information in it using the "available=" argument to the package
functions.

Duncan